Chapter 31

I bought my new airplane later that day. It was a little Cessna 172, a four place, single engine plane. It was almost new, having less than a hundred and twenty hours in the air. I had to pay a year in advance in order to lease a tie down space from the company where I'd taken my flight lessons earlier. I had checked out everything about my new plane, including having the guardian perform tests on the structural integrity of the fuselage. Before I bought it, I had checked it out as completely as I could.

After the sale was completed, I took the Cessna up again, enjoying the feeling of flying my own plane. I was planning on flying to San Antonio in four easy stages, stopping to refuel first in Phoenix, then again in El Paso, from there, on to Midland, and from there, straight in to San Antonio. It would be my longest flight destination as a pilot, and I planned to spend the night in Midland to rest up. On the return trip, I'd rest in El Paso, then fly, the next day, back to Santa Ana.

The next morning, Ken called to tell me that he was ready to go anytime it was convenient for me to leave. I had gotten my father and mother to convert money from several sources into five different bank checks of $37,500 each. When we first started out, Ken seemed very nervous about flying in such a small plane, not to mention, with a pilot that had fewer than 100 hours of post license flying experience. After we had been up for fifteen minutes or so, he relaxed, and we had a pleasant flight to Phoenix. We landed, got a sandwich, and refueled. We quickly got back up in the air, then landed to refuel in El Paso, and took a short rest and bathroom break, and then had a straight shot into a small strip close to Midland.

We rented a car from the fuel services operator, and drove into Midland, getting rooms at a hotel that was nicer than I expected to find. We went out to dinner, and I ordered a beer with my meal. The waitress asked Ken if he was giving permission for his son to drink. In Texas, at that time, parents could give approval for their underage children to be served alcohol. It was their right to decide, not the state's. We later saw two young boys, no more than eleven years old, drinking beer with their father in a little diner just outside of the Luling oil fields. It was almost unbelievable to me, especially since I hadn't ever witnessed it before.

The more I spoke with Ken, the more impressed I was with him. He had a mind that always tried to find a different approach to solving problems. He was constantly trying to come up with new twists to accomplish his goals. He was consumed by the unfairness of the American income tax system. If he had his way, he'd have a hundred clients, all of whom would pay zero in taxes. That was his professional goal in life. His other life fantasy was to be so wealthy that he could afford to spend all of his time in search of the perfect female breast. I had never met anyone else who had such a passionate interest and fascination for the female breast.

Wherever we went together, Ken would ogle any girl or woman that came into his sights. It didn't seem to matter to him how old or young they were, or how pretty or not so pretty they were either. It was their breasts that he was interested in. I found myself sitting at a bar with him in Amarillo that night, watching him getting a little drunk on scotch, while I sipped my Cokes. He spoke, unashamedly, about his fetish and lifelong fixation with breasts. When he had finished, I told him about Carolyn, describing for him the way her breasts stood straight out, and how they seemed to defy gravity. He mentioned several Hollywood stars, and asked me to rate her breasts against theirs. He didn't believe me when I told him that Carolyn's were much better, no contest.

"The best thing about them was how extremely sensitive they were. It didn't matter where you kissed or touched them, she loved any attention that you paid to them." When I finished talking about Carolyn, I realized once again how much I still missed her. Not just for her breasts, or for the rest of her body, although I did miss those things too, but for all of her. I even missed her bucked front teeth. It was her laugh though, and the way she would melt right into you, that I most remembered and missed. There are times when I give in to it and allow myself to wallow in self pity, and this was one of those times. I finished my last Coke, and then excused myself to go up to my room. I finally had to ask my guardian to help me get to sleep.

The next morning we left early, and flew into San Antonio. We rented a car, and then drove over to the town of Luling. The three men that we had come to see were all older men, and they had all been in on the outer fringes of oil and gas drilling in Oklahoma and Texas for more than forty years apiece. To me, there is something that is just a little bit sad about men who are in their late fifties or early sixties who are unsuccessful. This is even more true if they have been doing the same thing for a very long time. In the oil business, it is possible for good men to be unlucky their whole lives, never quite getting that one big strike that would have brought them the wealth and respect that they were after. That pretty much described these three men's lives.

They were good ole boys though, and all of them were liked enough that they were given little pieces of leases for drilling and development, leases that other, more successful drillers, didn't want, or need, to fool with. These leases in Luling were like that, too little to be bothered with much, unless you really needed something to keep you going. In all, there were fifteen potential well sites, and the three men had all come together to pool their contacts, and all of their experience, to try to make something good happen, to keep themselves afloat into retirement. All they lacked was enough money to drill their wells, and then they could sit back and live off of the oil flow that was sure to be there.

One of the problems that they had though, was that they had a limited time before they had to perform on those leases. The clock was running out for them and they could see that this possibly final real opportunity might never pan out for them. It was a nervous group when Ken introduced me to them. They must have expected a potential investor that was much closer in age and experience to them. Seeing me, I could almost see their hopes fading. I had my guardian scan all three of them for me, giving specific instructions for what I was looking to find out. Within a minute I had my answers.

Their original plan had been to make a deal to get the money for the first five wells, and then they had some hope to be able to use their income stream from the first five, to finance the drilling on the next five. Once they had ten producing wells, it would be easy to borrow the money to drill the final five. That is what they hoped for all along. Right then though, they would have each been willing to sell their share in the leases for five thousand dollars or, maybe, even less. I didn't want to push them for the best deal that I could get. There was enough potential here for everyone. I also entertained the thought that it was about time that these guys caught a good break in life.

We were all sitting down in this little diner, having the blue plate special of steak, fried potatoes and beans. Ken was trying to calm them down and reassure them about my ability to actually swing a deal like the one we were there to discuss. He told them about my new plane, and about how quickly I had grasped the concept of the tax write offs. It was time for me to speak up.

"Gentlemen, I'm sitting on five bank checks right now, each one made out in the amount of $37,500.00. That's a lot of money, but I brought it down here with me because I wanted you to know that I'm serious about possibly doing some business with you. I'm ready right now to tell you exactly what I am prepared to do, and then you can tell me whether that either meets with your approval or it doesn't. I'll fund the drilling for all fifteen of the wells, staggered at five wells each drilling period. If I'm doing that, I want the same deal for all of them that you're giving me for the first five. Ken gets the same deal on all fifteen wells as well. I know that you probably hoped to use the production from the first five to finance the drilling for the rest, but that isn't going to happen if I'm in the deal. I want to be in it for all of them, or in it for none of them. You have to decide which of those two options you'd prefer."

The three men looked at each other, and then they asked me if they could have some time to consider my offer, before reaching any decision. I told them to take all the time that they needed, with the clear understanding that when I got back in my plane to return to California, if they hadn't made a decision by then, I was leaving with those five bank checks still in my wallet. I told them I wasn't going to be coming back either. Jack Tate, the oldest of the three oilmen spoke then.

"If we do what you want this time, are you going to be available to sit down with us in the future, in case we come up with something else?"

"I like doing business with people who are easy to do business with. I know you all were hoping for a better deal than I'm offering, but I also know that you don't have all the time in the world to get this done. I'm not trying to squeeze you for everything I could get, and I'm not trying to just buy you out cheaply. If you take my offer, you'll get all your leases drilled. If you don't, you might, or maybe not. After this deal, I'll know whether or not we have a future working together. I think Ken feels the same. If everybody makes out good this time, why wouldn't we want to keep working together?"

"Is there any give to your proposition, or is it just take it or leave it?"

"I will always listen to what you have to say, is that what you're asking?"

"Darryl here, he wants us to buy our own rig, do all the drilling, and then sell it right after. He has a rig that he can get at a good price too. That would make more money for all of us." Darryl was the one who wasn't wearing a cowboy hat. He wore a hard hat like you saw at construction sites. He looked like he'd done some hard work all of his life. He just nodded in agreement to what Jack had said.

I looked over at Ken. "Would it affect my ability to write off drilling costs?" Ken answered me back quickly.

"You could depreciate the rig, using the purchase price as the basis. The partnership would lease the rig from you, and we could adjust everyone's account to reflect all of the savings, right after we sold the rig. How much for the rig?" Darryl spoke for the first time, and named a figure that seemed low to me. He said a friend of his had just gone under, and was trying to sell the rig to get enough to buy up some leases, and start all over. I gathered from the other drillers expressions that this was an oft told story with them. Darryl's friend was just another wildcatter who came up dry, and was selling off everything and starting all over again. It was the dream of hitting the big one that kept them all going.

I looked over at Ken and he nodded yes to me. He was saying that I should buy the rig at that price.

"I'll buy it outside the partnership, and then we'll split the net savings, four ways, equal shares. I'll take care of Ken for the extra accounting work."

"Well, I guess we got us a deal then. You got those papers for us to sign, Ken?"

Ken pulled five contracts out of his valise, and made three or four changes to reflect our new understanding about the rig, and it being fifteen wells, rather than only five. We all signed and initialed in several places, and the deal was done.

"I guess the only thing left here is for us to decide who has to pay for this lunch." Jack said this with a straight face.