The oil boom and ensuing oil bust of the late 70s and 80s is long past and seems almost like a dream to me now. I can recount stories about the era for hours, some of them funny and some of them sad and I still chuckle about one that happened to me and my then wife Anne.
Anne was an oil and gas accountant – a damn good oil and gas accountant. She and I formed a small oil company and began drilling wells. I love oil business, but Anne was passionate about it. She poured her heart and soul into our company (and I suppose so did I).
Caught up inextricably in the bust, we both fought with every sinew of our beings to save our floundering company. We set out on a quest for a “white knight,” or at least a friendly banker. Alas, we found neither but we had a few adventures along the way.
I have often heard that people that live together for a long time begin to look alike. If this is true then Anne and I were identical twins. Why, because we were together twenty-four hours every day. Hey, and we both had reddish-blonde hair.
Anne and I traveled the country looking for a friendly banker to bow up our company, suddenly needy with
“I’m curious,” he said when we finished our presentation. “How did a brother and sister happen to start an oil company together?”
Neither Anne nor I had a good reply and it didn’t really matter as his inane remark gave us the answer to the question we had just spent an hour asking.
We never found our white knight, or our friendly banker. Like so many companies during the 80s oil bust, we went belly up. Yes, the bust is long past and seems almost like a dream to me now. Some of the stories were funny but many, so many, I keep buried deep in my heart – until moments such as now when they come bubbling up painfully to a surface still frothy with crushed emotion.
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Eric and Anne – 1982