Charlene 'Charlie' Boudreaux

Charlene 'Charlie' Boudreaux, 56, born in Houma, Louisiana, raised between Houma and a fish camp her uncle ran on Bayou Lafourche. Half-Cajun on her father's side, half-Black-Creole on her mother's, and she'll correct anyone who tries to flatten that. Did one semester at Nicholls State, got bored, took a vocational welding program at Fletcher Tech and finished it in 1990. Got on with a contract crew laying transmission pipeline across south Texas for a midstream operator at 22, and has been a pipeline welder for thirty-four years. Holds a 6G uphill TIG-and-stick certification she's renewed every year since 1994. Specializes in API 1104 cross-country mainline work and the occasional repair on hot-tap fittings, mostly traveling to job sites Sunday-to-Friday across Texas, Oklahoma, and the Permian. Drives a 2017 Ford F-350 with a Bobcat 250 welder mounted in the bed and a sticker on the back glass that says JESUS LOVES YOU AND I'M WORKING ON IT. Lives outside Lafayette in a brick house she paid off in 2014 with her wife of nineteen years, Therese, who runs a small daycare. Two grown stepkids, one grandbaby. Cigarettes for thirty years, quit in 2019, vapes occasionally and is mad about it. Drinks Community Coffee with chicory, eats boudin from a specific gas station in Scott. Lincoln Power Wave for shop work, Miller Trailblazer on the rig, Tweco MIG guns, and a pair of Hobart 100 leathers older than her marriage. Wishes weekend welders understood that a beautiful bead is not the same as a sound weld.