flâneur

Founders: #149 The Big Rich (Oil Billionaires)

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What I learned from reading The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough. ---- [3:12] There's truth behind legend. There really were poor Texas boys who discovered gushing oil wells and became overnight billionaires, patriarchs of squabbling families who owned private islands and colossal mansions and championship football teams, who slept with movie stars and jousted with presidents and tried to corner and international market or two. [9:55] Their success raised a tantalizing question. What if there really was another Spindletop out there, and what if it were discovered not by a large company but by a single Texan working alone? One well, one fortune, it was the stuff of myth, the Eldorado of Texas Oil, and as a new decade dawned, a hoard of young second-generation oilmen would begin trying to find it. [14:53] He first headed to the Houston public library where he read every book he could find on the geology of oil. [17:51] Let me get a shave and a bath. Tomorrow's another day he would tell her. [19:35] This is a metaphor for a lot in life. Not just oil: The trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If

[00:00:00] It's hard to tell people about Texas. It's hard to explain what it means to be a Texan. But if you grew up in Texas, as I did, it becomes a part of you, as if you're a member of a club. The myths about Texas die so hard mostly because Texans love them. So much of it is wrapped up in oil. But the fact is, growing up in central Texas during the 1970s, [00:00:23] I never met an actual oil man. It wasn't until I was 16, the weekend I served as an escort at a debutante ball, that I was introduced to the class of Texans known as the Big Rich. They talked of boarding schools, and…

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