Earlier this year, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) launched Fueling America: 250 Years of Energy Innovation. A major part of this project is brief biographies on major and lesser-known industry pioneers. One biography was done on J. Howard Marshall II, whose book Done in Oil was published in 1996 by Texas A&M Press.
Unfortunately, Texas A&M Press had a woke, humorless editor (she is now a Deacon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Austin). A dozen sections were taken out that somewhat compromised the factual, tell-it-like-it-was book. The removed excerpts follow for posterity (and yes, the book itself is worth reading for an inside-out look at the oil industry from the 1930s to the 1960s).
Preface, p. xiii
“One of the corporate giants who really ran his oil company was Charlie Jones of Richfield Oil. He once put mere moneymaking, even in the big-money oil industry, in a nutshell.
Responding to a young real estate operator boasting of millions recently made in real estate, Charlie looked down from his six foot-six frame and said simply, ‘Young fellow, when you get as old as I am, I hope you will have learned that it’s more fun chasing it than having it’.
Actually, it was Charlie as head of Richfield (now Atlantic-Richfield or Arco) who initiated the Prudhoe Bay discovery on the North Slope of Alaska, the largest oil find in the history of North America. After that discovery, some of us who were his camp mates at the Bohemian Grove chided him about the new wealth we all believed was about to follow. We suggested that while he used to count sheep to go to sleep, he could now count his money, Charlie–never at a loss for words–agreed, but he added that we needed to print the stuff in larger denominations so he could get more sleep.”
Chapter 2, p. 54
“Bill Pemberton once went on a safari to Africa knowing he was to address the Los Angeles Chapter of the Desk and Derrick Club (an organization of ladies in the oil business) upon his return. His first slide was a picture of a bevy of bare bosomed African women carrying a sign that read, “The Tanganika Chapter of the Desk and Derrick Club.”
To Bill, I fear, sexual intercourse as about like shaking hands. He accepted the oil umpire’s job, obviously a tough one, to help him forget his domestic troubles. Some weeks before, his wife found him in a compromising situation at their home with a cute little thing. Bill could only complain that his wife “walked right out on me and never gave me a change to explain.”
Bill once introduced me to a large audience of California oil producers by reading two alleged wires. One was from Secretary Ickes to me. It read, ‘Why haven’t you finished that job I sent you to do in California?’ My reply read, ‘Because I’ve been too f—ing busy and vice versa.'”
My best story about Bill, a true one, came when I was trying to coach him as my witness in connection with an antitrust proceeding. I asked how he would answer if the judge inquired whether he had lunch on a certain day with a Mr. St. Clair, the president of Union Oil of California. Bill indicated he would answer in the affirmative. Suppose he then inquires, ‘What did you talk about?’ To which Bill replied, ‘Oh, the usual things your honor, cock and whiskey.’ He got the question and answered just that way. The courtroom exploded, and the opposing attorney dropped the subject like a hot potato.”
Chapter 2: p. 57
“Many big shots in the business, who later denied it, literally prayed for us amateurs in government to ‘save us else we perish.’ A few years later, when most of them found salvation, few sinners remembered their prayers. Such is human nature.”
Chapter 2, p. 66
“Interior Secretary Harold Ickes had an eye for a shapely leg. There was a lobbyist during the war who had two of them. She almost sold him on building a concrete pipeline from Texas to the East Coast instead of using steel in the Big Inch lines.”
Chapter 3, p. 66
“Once I asked Al Weil when he thought he would be buying the next batch of gasoline. Al, the son of a Jewish father and Irish mother, looked up and said, ‘My old man always told me to grab time by the foreskin. I think I’ll start this afternoon.”
Chapter 3: p. 76
“One piece of paper dealing with a discounting gasoline station was found in the files of one of the companies. It bore a penciled notation, ‘Vic, send this to the laundry.’ No one in the company could seem to explain what it meant–and to this day neither can I.”
Chapter 3, p. 93
“We all worked hard in those days. But we played hard too. Once, after a weekend on Signal’s 120-foot yacht as the guest of Sam Mosher, the head of Signal Oil & Gas, we talked about our poor, broken-down, independent oil friends and their lifestyles. Ralph Davies had Standard’s public relations department put together a book of pictures. One series was entitled, ‘The Independent–Their Yachts,’ another ‘Their Residences,’ and still another, ‘Their Summer Places,’ and last but not least, ‘The Independents–Their Women, also expensive.’ Needless to say, the book did not enjoy a wide circulation.”
Chapter 4, pp. 138–139
“I presented the contract to Jesse Jones, the head of Defense Supplies Corporation, the buyer of the gasoline. When he came to the algebraic equation, he looked up asking what it meant. In jest, I told him it was derived from a favorite limerick of mine. I recited it:
‘A young mathematical named Hall … he had a hexagonal ball … And the square of its weight … Plus his penis plus eight … Was two thirds of five ninths of that’s all’
Jesse laughed, asked me to write the limerick down, and then signed the contract.”
Chapter 4, p. 142
“Evette ‘De’ DeGolyer described what happened at his meeting with the Texas Railroad Commission. He began by displaying FDR’s executive order and asked to speak off the record. He told the story of a soldier in North Africa who was looking for a good, tough house of ill fame. A taxi driver took him to the toughest in town. When he emerged bloody but unbowed, the driver asked if it was tough enough. The soldier inquired whether the driver knew anyone who frequented the place. The driver nodded affirmatively. ‘Well,’ said the soldier holding out a clenched hand, ‘maybe you can tell me whose balls these are.'”
“De held up the executive order. The chairman of the TRC, E.O. Thompson, asked how we needed the oil to be allocated next month. After De submitted a schedule, the chairman announced, ‘Dr. DeGolyer, it will be just that way’.”
Chapter 4, p. 146
“DeGolyer once returned from a meeting with the War Production Board where Ickes led another battle to retain complete control of oil and gas matters with the Petroleum Administration for War. De said it reminded him of nothing so much as the dwarf in the circus who married the fat lady. On the nuptial night the circus folk peeked under the tent flap. There they saw the dwarf stalking up and down between the two cots, pounding his chest and shouting, ‘Acres and acres of ass–and it’s all mine’.”
Chapter 6, pp. 218
“In the days of the war we defined a good government administrator as one who could keep six balls in the air and simultaneously hang onto his own.”
Chapter 7, p. 240
“I started informally by recalling one of our favorite stories from the Chevy Chase summer. It was the yarn about a lady who asked her husband on the nuptial night, ‘My Lord do the common folk do this too?’ After the Lordship answered, ‘Yes,’ her ladyship responded with, ‘Well, it’s much too good for them.’ We went from there to the meat of the arguments.”
Today’s Master Resource entry qualifies for the description: Not your standard internet fare.
One of the reasons my interest in the “awl bidness” never flagged throughout a long career on its periphery was its outrageous characters and its colorful history.