Dads Humor aka You Cant Take the Man Out of Texas Youve all heard the old saying, with some variation, You can take the man outta Texas, but you cant take Texas outta the man. Well, sometimes, you cant do the former, either. Dad had traveled the globe and spent several years in South Lousiana, working for The Superior Oil Company, and was ultimately in charge of all offshore production for them. He longed, however, to return home to Texas. In the late 60s Mobil Oil was courting Superior for a buy-out, and the company wanted to place a couple of young petroleum engineers under his tutelage and transfer him from Lafayette to Lake Charles. He decided right then he wasnt going to train some yankee whipper-snappers from Virginia (Mobils former headquarters) to take over his job, and saw it as a prime opportunity for early retirement. He moved back to Texas and build a nice retirement home on the shores of Lake Houston, just outside Humble. He kept busy in his retirement, however, running the stripper oil fields just south of Humble for H. L. Mengden (a story in itself) and managing his shell oil interests in Colorado. With a lot of experience and reputation in the business, however, it wasnt too long afterwards that Dad was approached with a fantastic employment offer from a large company up north. I dont think he ever told us exactly who it was; may have been Texaco (headquarted in NY), Pennzoil (in PA at the time), Standard Oil (Chicago) or some other. Regardless, he had been quiet about it for while and we were all itching to know if he would accept the position or not. I was home on leave from overseas, sitting at the dinner table one night, and asked Dad point blank if hed made a decision. Dad smiled and said, Id pretty much decided before I hung up the phone. I heard they werent hiring one-armed men up there, and theyd rip one of mine off before they could drag me outta Texas again. Dad lived in that house another 22 years before passing away. And except for a couple of elk hunting/business trips to Colorado, he never set foot outside Texas again!
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 18:33:39 +0000
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