Max Williams had sold a third of U.S. Operating to Dick and Alan Gold for a hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars. The funds gave him the working capital he so desperately needed. The Gold brothers owned a woman’s clothing manufacturing company called Nardis of Dallas, and both admitted they knew absolutely nothing about the oil business. Dick Gold, however, wanted to be like Max Williams. He had invested in real estate with Williams. He wore cowboy boots, western shirts, and denim jeans similar to those Williams wore. And he played tennis with Max Williams every chance he got. The Gold brothers did not know whether oil was a good or a bad investment. They just wanted to be in business with Max Williams, and, in their minds, they were simply doing their friend a favor.
Williams needed some money. They happened to have some money. Deal done. No questions asked. Besides, they were also intrigued with the idea of being involved in the search for raw crude. It put them in the middle of a mythical Texas that had been built on cattle and oil. It may not ever be as good as the movie Giant, but it was close. And in the oil game, close sometimes counts.
Max Williams had known Edwin L. Cox for years. Cox was on the board at Southern Methodist University and had admired Williams’ exploits on the basketball court and in the tenuous, ever-changing world of business. Several years earlier, while working as a real estate broker, Williams had sold him the sixty-seven-hundred-acre La Reata Ranch in the heart of the East Texas piney woods. They were more than casual acquaintances. The rumors of oil brought them closer together.
By all accounts, by all who knew him, Edwin Cox was an honest man but a hard trader, a long-time oilman, whose father had been a partner with Jake Hamon in the oil exploration business throughout Texas and Oklahoma. Oil was his birthright.
The storied career of Hamon’s father had been cut short when a gunshot in an Ardmore, Oklahoma, hotel room took his life in 1920. Was it an accident, a suicide, or had he been murdered by his stenographer at the dastardly end of a scandalous love affair? Whispers, as always, were far more plentiful than the facts.
Jake Hamon, the second, dropped out of law school after his father’s funeral and trekked to the oilfields around Ranger, Texas. A roustabout’s life was no good at all, so a year later, he returned to Oklahoma, drilled his first well, partnered up with Edwin B. Cox, and had a bad run with dry stripper wells before hitting it big. The Hamon legacy in oil had been handed down from father to son just as it would be in the Cox family.
Edwin Cox, the son, had built a celebrated career in oil and gas production. He had made millions of dollars and invested them in oil, politics, and, above all, Southern Methodist University. But Max Williams did not want his investment dollars. Nor did he ask for them. Max Williams was far more interested in the knowledge that Cox possessed about the oil business. When the two men finally sat down, held together by their close bond at SMU, Williams told him succinctly enough, “I’d like to get more involved in the oil business.”
“Been in it yet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Drill a few wells?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had any luck?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Think you can do it again?”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
Cox laughed, then leaned back in his chair and said, “Oil can make you a rich man, Max. But it can whittle you away to nothing. Oil is a tough business. Not every hole has oil at the bottom of it.”
Williams quietly and openly placed his cards on the table. He and Cox would be honest with each other if nothing else. “I’ve drilled a few wells in the Fort Worth Basin, out in Palo Pinto County to be more exact,” he said. “My partner and I made some money from production, then sold the field to a German company. But I’m still just small time. I’d like to be an operator, and there’s an awful lot I haven’t learned yet.” Williams paused, then asked softly, “Do you really think that somebody like me can be successful in the oil business?” The question was simple, heartfelt, and to the point.
“It’s a good business,” Cox replied. “Might even get better. You’ve got to be tough, but you know that. There are a lot of disappointments along the way, but I bet you’ve figured that out as well. If you find a good field, stick with it, hang in there even when everything looks like it might be falling apart around you, the amount of money you can make is staggering.”
“Do you have any idea where I should go from here?”
“Do you have any acreage?”
“No, sir.”
“Leases?”
“No, sir.”
Cox thought it over, then suggested that Max Williams and his partner consider moving their operation down south, down into the Austin Chalk of Pearsall, Texas, where a new play had just gotten underway. The field had made more than a few good wells and had experienced a fair amount of success.
No one doubted that the chalk could be tricky, Cox said, but the fractures had oil in them, and his plan was to cut through the faults at an angle in order to encounter as many fractures as possible. It was vital for an operator to have a geologist smart enough to read the seismic log and cagey enough to find the crude, but, yes, he thought, Pearsall just might be as good a place as any for Williams to get a solid education about the hard knocks, hard luck, and hard cash of the oilfield.
“We have twenty-two locations in Frio County,” Cox said. “They’re all clustered together, and we don’t plan to drill anywhere outside of the leases we already have. I have a feeling that you can pick up as much acreage in the Pearsall chalk as you want.”
Edwin Cox may well have been plotting to explore and maybe even drill on locations far removed from Pearsall. If so, however, he did not bother to mention any of them. He pulled a map of the Pearsall field out of his desk, stretched it flat, and marked dots on those twenty-two key locations where he owned his leases. Max Williams was certainly welcome to wander around Pearsall and pick up as much acreage as he wanted. Frio County had other operators running around, probing the ground, but the field was wide open, and there was a lot of land that farmers hadn’t yet turned loose. Good price. Good leases. Good luck. Godspeed.
Max Williams had met with a man he trusted. Irv Deal immediately went to see his Patron Saint of the oil business, Frank West. Like Williams, he was looking for advice. He wanted answers. He knew Frank West had them. Frank West always did.
“We drilled eight wells,” Irv Deal said.
“Hit any oil?”
“They were all productive.”
West grinned and shrugged. “Then what do you need from me?” he asked.
“What do I do now?”
“You need a good petroleum engineer,” West said. “You need somebody to look over your shoulder and help guide your exploration efforts. If you have the right leases, you need somebody who knows how to find oil.”
“Where do I find I good petroleum engineer?”
“Go meet John LaRue,” West replied. “His firm is LaRue, Moore, and Schafer. It’s located here in Dallas, and they have the best group of petroleum engineers and finest bunch of geologists you can find.”
“Does John need a new client?”
“John’s always looking for somebody who’s looking for oil.”
Max Williams and Irv Deal sat down in the well-appointed and prestigious Dallas office of John LaRue, Joe Moore, and Bob Schafer. Yes, the petroleum engineers said, they knew all about the historical incongruities of the Austin Chalk. They had heard the horror stories, most if not all of them. Certainly, it was their business to study the earth and understand the nuances of its anomalies.
John LaRue, however, was blunt and frank with them both, pointing out that his firm did not