– Chapter 3 –
People Think There Is an Oil Glut. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.
October 18, 1980 was an especially tough – and fortuitous – day.
It was my senior year at Vanderbilt University. I played football as a tight end. And that particular day, we had played exceptionally poorly. Herschel Walker and the 6th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs beat us 41-0 between the hedges in Athens, Georgia. I think Herschel set a rushing record that day. As I sat in the lobby of “The Towers,” my dorm building, that evening, licking my wounds, a group of pretty girls in pajamas walked by. They were headed to a law school pajama party. And one girl in particular drew my attention. She was cute, blonde, blue eyed, and wore a Lanz nightgown. You know the kind – long, flannel, high neck. I stayed in the lobby of The Towers until midnight waiting for that girl to come back. When she finally did, we struck up a conversation that has lasted 37 years. (She still owns that Lanz nightgown.) October 18, 1980 wasn’t just special because I met my wife. It was also the beginning of my journey into the oil and gas business… My wife is from a ranching and oil and gas family in the Texas panhandle. Her great grandfather Henry Schafer, a German immigrant, was an early Texas oil legend. I saw the kind of money he made in the business – $50,000 per month from his oil and gas lease in 1929! – and wanted in.
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