border, in San Antonio and El Paso. In the last six months, three global
father was in the Air Force for 10 years, but when the last base shut down in Abilene, he got into the oil-service industry. When he was younger, his dad told him, “You can do anything you want, but you’re not getting into oil.” So Cactus took him at his word, initially. He kicked off college with an accounting major, but if you speak to Cactus for only a second, there’s one thing you’ll know in your bones: he’s no accountant. So he pivoted to education with a concentration in earth science – he had a knack for it. And in 1981, he got his second degree in geology. But his academic pedigree only surface-scratched his potential, whetting his professional appetite for what lay beneath his feet. And at that time, the oil business boomed. Oil had shot from around $2 a barrel in 1972 to nearly $30 a barrel in 1979, spurred on by OPEC and the Arab-Israeli war. And Texas was an epicenter for the industry. So young Cactus, armed with hard-earned knowledge, denying his father’s word but embracing his old man’s history, seized the petroleum opportunity by its slippery horns. THE TEXAN TAPESTRY You don’t mess with Texas. But how many Texases are there? Austin differs wildly from Abilene, and there’s some talk of Texas going Blue in the coming years. So Cactus broke down how he thinks of his home state, claiming a unifier would be its thriving industries – lumber in East Texas, oil in West and South Texas. And he mentions the industriousness of the Hispanics along the
corporations moved out of California and now call Texas home: Hewlett Packard, Oracle, and Tesla. And there’s no telling how many auxiliary companies will swoop in next, with most settling into Austin. Cactus tells me, “You can’t keep paying taxes like that and try to keep your business with its head above water. Maybe Silicon Valley can but, hell, even HP is saying goodbye to California.” Cactus broke down how he thinks of his home state, claiming a unifier would be its thriving industries – lumber in East Texas, oil in West and South Texas. And he mentions the industriousness of the Hispanics along the border, in San Antonio and El Paso. Texas is the second-largest state in the union, and Cactus is proud of its diversity from one end to the other. Though he still insists that if you look at it as a whole, it leans conservatively on the political spectrum (even though it has a history of Blue Dog Democrats). But Cactus could see that changing. There are four million more people in Texas now versus 10 years ago – a lot from California and from over the border. And it’s not just Californians coming to Texas. The aforementioned tech
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