Author's note: This is a story I've been thinking about since I started writing again. When I finally committed myself to writing it, it came together rather quickly. I have several follow-on chapters that I'm currently editing. This is a new genre to me, so a pre-emptive heartfelt apology to the regular practitioners of this area is probably in order. Hopefully, I didn't cock it up too bad. As always, please let me know what you think, good or bad.
-nosebone
*****
As I look back on the 47 some odd years I've lived on this earth, I think back to the things I've seen and done. Of course, the first half of my life were the fun years, and if anyone that knows me now were to read this story, they'd probably never believe any of it. This is a story of the time in my life when I started towards manhood. When I became a lover. When I became what I am today.
My father was a successful petroleum engineer. I never knew my dad's family as he was orphaned as a toddler and his records were lost during a tragic fire at the orphanage. He grew up in a series of foster homes, finished high school and joined the United States Army in 1965. Following basic and individual training, he was soon deployed to South Vietnam as a door gunner on UH-1 "Huey" helicopters. I never knew he served in the military until I was in high school. Later in his life, we talked a lot about what he had seen and done. After those conversations, I was very thankful to have been born, let alone to have enjoyed the life I had.
Following three tours in Vietnam, he rotated home and was discharged. He didn't know what he was going to do, but having grown up in Texas, he thought anything in the oil business would be a good idea. He enrolled at the University of Texas and graduated 3 ½ years later at the top of his class. He took a job as a staff engineer for a large oil company, and he soon developed a reputation as an engineer that could solve the most difficult production problems. He left a promising career with the major company to start his own consulting firm shortly before he met my mother. Soon, the big boys were calling him for advice. The initial jobs were lucrative, but he was shrewd and eventually negotiated a smaller consulting fee with a percentage of the increased production on the back end. He'd managed to somehow pull himself up by his own boot straps and was well on his way.
My dad, mom and I had been all over the world by the time this story began. His work took us to Norway, England, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina and Indonesia to name some of our stops across the globe. I started playing soccer in England when I was 3 years old. As we made our way to different countries, it was something that I could use to make friends, even if I couldn't speak their language. It also made me a very good soccer player. I've often wondered how many of the kids that I played against during our travels grew up to be famous players. We finally settled down in Houston in time for me to start 7th grade.
My dad never really talked money with me. My life growing up was always comfortable. At an early age, my father stressed that we were far more fortunate in life than most people. He taught me about the joys of giving, about helping people out when you could. When we were overseas, we always lived in nice accommodations and traveled extensively. Following our move back to Houston, my parents finally bought their first house since marrying. It was a rather large house in an exclusive area of Houston. It was much nicer than any place we had ever lived. It had a swimming pool, hot tub and a tennis court, but then so did almost every other house in the neighborhood. Most of the other kids in the neighborhood were the children of oil & gas or chemical company executives. In contrast, my dad and I mowed our own yard. My parents both drove small, simple cars my whole life. We went on a good vacation once a year.
I never really understood how successful my dad had been in life until one day during my junior year in high school. I was doing math homework and my graphing calculator's batteries died. I knew Dad kept extra batteries in his desk in the study. I went down and began to search his desk for some. I was looking and finally located some, when I noticed a bunch of envelopes on his desk. There was a post-it note with my mom's hand writing on it. "Here's today's haul." There was a big smiley face drawn under the writing. I looked at the way the envelopes were organized before I started poking through them.
The first one was addressed from what at the time was the biggest oil company in the world. The guy across the street was some sort of big wig with the company. He had a car and a driver and would often glare at my dad and I when he saw us out in the yard mowing or trimming trees. His youngest son was my age and he was a real piece of work. He was constantly bragging about this or that. I never paid him much attention because we lived across the street from them. They couldn't be that much better off than we were, I'd thought.
Finally, curiosity got the best of me. I reached in the envelope and pulled the contents out. There was a letter and what looked to be a check. I focused on the letter first. I saw it was addressed to my dad and it said this was his third quarter production earnings check from some oil field somewhere. I never finished reading the letter, because I looked at the check. I'd never seen a check with so many numbers and commas. And this was just a quarterly check! There were several other envelopes and I looked at each one. Each contained checks representing similarly large sums of money. Whoa, I thought to myself.
After dinner that night, my dad was working in his study. I was thinking about what I saw, and I decided to ask him about it. I knocked on his study door and asked if he was busy.
"No, never too busy for you sport, what's on your mind?" He asked.
I briefly summarized what I saw earlier that day and I apologized for snooping. He nodded thoughtfully.
"What's bothering you about it?" He asked.
"Dad, um, well, I'm just wondering. Were those real?"
He nodded with a little grin on his face. "Son, I was hoping to talk to you about all of this when you were a little older, but it sounds like now might be the time." He moved over to the leather sofa that was in front of the window. He patted the couch next to him and I sat down. "Now, Tim, the fact of the matter is, I've been extremely successful and awfully lucky, given how I got started in life." I nodded as he talked. "I have a beautiful wife, a good son," he put his arm around me, "and I've been able to make some very large companies a lot of money, and they have to share it with me." He briefly explained how this was all possible. "So yes, those checks are real."
"But dad, those were like huge numbers. Aren't we like super rich? I mean the guy across the street looks at us weird, because we mow our own yard." I had previously mentioned to him about the way the guy's youngest son teased me at school about doing our own lawn work.
"Son, I want you to understand this. The guy across the street is just an asshole. I've met him numerous times throughout my career. He's just an asshole. I can promise you, he doesn't see in a year what you saw on that one check, and he knows that too. I'm sure that it burns his ass knowing that."
"Yes sir," I nodded.
"Son, we have money, but your Mom and I've not brought you up to be a spoiled, arrogant, little shit like your class mate. You're going to appreciate a dollar and know what it takes to earn it. I got a pretty rough start in life, and I'm glad to have kept you from going through that yourself. Your mom and I will always help you through life, but you're going to work for it."
"Yes, sir. I understand."
"Your grandparents have a tremendous amount of money, because of all those wells on their ranch. They make oil like you can't imagine. The first time I met him, he told me the amount of oil they were already making off that place and I could have fell over." He grabbed his chest and made a goofy face, causing me to laugh. "But he was damn sure that we could get that number up. And, lo and behold, we did. Your granddad took good care of me for that. Finally, after your momma and I were married and you were out of diapers, I told him to just keep it, do something else with it. And did he. He's got money in just about anything you could imagine. Computers, semi-conductors, cellular phones. To this day, he still tries to give me "my end" of the investments he's made. I always tell him to let your Granny put it one of her charities and he does. Timmy, he's the best businessman I've ever met, and I've met a lot of supposedly smart Harvard and Yale types that can't hold a candle to that old bomber pilot."
I nodded and smiled.
"Son, your granddad has taught me a lot of things since I've known him. In a way, he's kind of like my dad too, since I never really had one. He's taught me a lot of things about life and money and all of it really. Money is a nice thing, but it should never be the only thing. A man can be rich and still be poor, if money is all that matters to him. Your granddad has more money than most people could imagine, but he's got good people in his life. The only thing I've ever seen him splurge on is that goddamn jet of his, and that's only because he's afraid to fly, unless he's the pilot." We both laughed at that. "Timmy, the important thing is, you don't have to flaunt it in front of people. We've all worked hard for our money and it will take hard work to keep it. Nothing in life is ever given to you. Okay?"
"Yes, sir."
By the time I graduated from college, Dad had enough money salted away that my great-grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives. I chose the same life and have continued the family business to this day.
----
My grandparents had four daughters and one son. The oldest daughter was my mom, Jill. She earned an accounting degree, but due to the extensive time we spent abroad, she never really worked as an accountant. After we moved to Houston, she was active with various charities, which she found very rewarding. The next oldest daughter, June, was a pediatrician. She married an engineer that worked for a defense contractor. They lived in Michigan and had one daughter, Katie. The third daughter was my Aunt Barbara. Barbara (Barbs), was an attorney and married a civil engineer. They had twins, Jeannie and Jeff. Unfortunately, her husband was killed in a traffic accident when the twins were 4. Barbs never remarried and devoted her time to raising the kids and to her career. They lived three houses down from my grandparents in Dallas. Ironically, the four of us cousins were within a month of one another in age. Katie and I were born three days apart in April, the twins were born in May.
My grandparents added the fourth daughter and a son fairly late in life. They were just a few years older than I was. My aunt Leslie was the youngest daughter and had finished her fourth, but not final, year of college at SMU when this started. She was the fun one, pretty and vivacious. She liked having a good time, as her academic career could testify. My Uncle Billy was the baby, and the boy genius who entered the University of Texas a year early. Everyone said he was going to graduate well before Leslie.
My grandparents lived just outside Dallas, in a very upscale suburb. They also had a big ranch and house outside Midland in west Texas, and a house in Aspen, Colorado. My great-grandfather had acquired the ranch with dreams of a large cattle operation. The only problem was a lack of water. Fortunately for him, there was another liquid in the ground, and it was a lot more valuable than either cattle or water. My great-grandfather's only son had finished a geology degree on the G.I. Bill after being a B-17 pilot during World War II. After graduation, my grandfather enticed investors to put up money to drill a series of wells on the family ranch.
With the financial backing, he bought a drilling rig and with the help of friends and family, they drilled the first 5 wells themselves. It turned out, it wasn't a matter of finding oil, as much as what do with all of it once they drilled a well. My great-grandfather died a very rich man. After his death, my grandfather, who we called Pops, further developed the oil field. He made a call one day to a hot shot young petroleum engineer. That turned out to be my dad, Thomas. My dad suggested several tweaks and soon the oil production from the family leases increased ten-fold. While working on the ranch, dad met my mother, and six months later they were married. I was the first grandchild born a year after that.
The Dallas suburb, the ranch and the house in Aspen were where I had spent most of my school breaks and summers while Dad was working overseas. We generally spent Christmas and sometimes Spring Break in Aspen snow skiing. I enjoyed these visits because I felt like I was making up a lot of the time I had missed out on with family. Having never known his own family, my dad always stressed the meaning of togetherness and family.
When we were together, the four of us cousins were practically inseparable. They became the siblings I never had. We were always playing and having fun. This continued into our teens. At night, we'd generally all crash together at either our grandparent's place or at Aunt Barbs house. We had a swimming pool and hot tub at both places. Looking back at it now, we were just spoiled brats.
Jeff and I were close, but I was always closest to the girls. Having moved around a lot growing up, the girls were then and remain to this day my two closest friends. We would always write letters or talk on the phone if we could. They both knew they could confide in me, as I could confide in them. This continued with the onset of puberty. The summers during our teen years consisted of me answering a lot of questions about boys, what interested boys and why boys were such idiots. It wasn't just them, I was curious too. Jeff and I shared a lot detailed conversations too after we'd go to bed at night.
