The oil boom and ensuing oil
bust of the 70s and 80s is long past and seems almost like a dream to me now. I
can recount stories about the period for hours, some of them funny and some of
them sad, and I still chuckle about one that happened to my then wife Anne and
me.
Anne was an oil and gas
accountant – a damn good oil and gas accountant. She and I formed a small oil
company and began drilling wells. I love the oil business, but Anne was passionate
about it. She poured her heart and soul into our company, and I guess so did I.
Caught up inextricably in the
bust, we both fought to keep our floundering company. We began a quest for a
“white knight,” or at least a responsive banker. Alas, we found neither, but we
had a few adventures along the way.
I have often heard that
people that live together for a long time begin to look alike. If this is true
then Anne and I were identical twins. Why? Because we were together twenty-four
hours every day, and we both had reddish-blonde hair.
As Oklahoma Los
Angeles
“I’m curious,” he said when
we finished our presentation. “How did a brother and sister happen to start an
oil company together?”
Neither Anne nor I had a satisfactory
response and it didn’t truly matter as his inane remark gave us the answer to
the question we had just spent an hour asking.
We never found our white
knight, or our friendly banker. Like so many companies during the 80s oil bust,
we went belly-up. Yes, the bust is long past and seems almost like a dream to
me now. Some of the stories were funny but many, so many, I keep buried deep in
my mind until moments such as now when they come bubbling up painfully to a surface
still foaming with crushed emotion.
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