by Bryan Mealer
At First Baptist, Dad also reunited with an old childhood friend, Rex Rainey, who was emerging from his own rowdy years in the boom and seeking a change. Mom became close with Rex’s wife, Wanda, and their boys were the same ages as my sisters, so our two families began spending a lot of Friday and Saturday nights together.
After supper the kids played while the four of them sat around the kitchen table and talked. Almost always the conversation turned toward church and faith and how they wanted to do things differently than their parents, to forge their own relationships with God. For Mom and Dad, it was the first time they’d ever discussed such things with friends, as adults anyway, and it felt as if they were inventing a new kind of language. Oftentimes the discussions went so late into the night that Rex and Wanda put the boys to bed with us, then racked out on the sofa.
Back when we lived in Midland, Dad had bought an acoustic Alvarez guitar that he pulled out occasionally, but he’d never been serious about learning more than a few chords. But Rex played, and some nights over beers, the two of them went back and forth on a melody and jotted down lyrics.
Before long, Dad had a notebook full of his own songs. The first one he wrote was called “Rolex,” about the life he was leaving behind and where it was likely to lead him if he kept on running. “Rolex on my arm, Cadillac in the drive, a brand-new home, I’m all alone, isn’t this the life?” He and Rex played that one a lot, along with a heartbreak number they penned together called “Adios, My Love.” But Dad’s second song was the one he was most proud of, about the change he was undergoing and how he strove to live. It was called “Eagle Saints,” inspired by a verse in Isaiah that says, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles…”
As Dad understood it, the eagle could fly above a storm. With that in mind, he embraced the eagle as a kind of spirit animal of his new self. Soon I started noticing eagle things around our house, including a brass eagle statue on our coffee table next to the pump jack. Whereas Grady and the boys occupied the altitude of man, Dad could mount up with mighty wings and rise above the noise, into heavenly space, into glory.
Here I am, Lord.
Mold me and mend me.
I’m all yours, Lord, wash me and cleanse me.
As your spirit changes me and the new man comes to life,
I can soar the highest heights,
Eagle Saints arise!
14
The Texas Miracle goes bust … Bob’s last load … Dad finds new life …
Outside the Permian Basin, the fallout from the oil bust actually started the previous year, in July 1982. As oil prices dropped, banks caught up in the go-go lending craze found themselves in deep trouble. The royalty checks customers used as primary means of repaying their loans suddenly shrank or disappeared. At the same time, the value of proven oil reserves that customers used as collateral—the secondary source of repayment—was also heavily diminished. When cash flow stopped, the regulators swooped down on the banks and started charging off delinquent loans, which sparked a run on deposits as people feared the banks would close. When that happened, banks did begin to fail, starting spectacularly with Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City, whose collapse sent tremors through the financial sector.
Penn Square was a tiny commercial bank headquartered in a shopping mall, but its executives never let size deter them—not during an oil boom. When oil prices were at their peak, its energy-loan officers—led by the eccentric Bill Patterson, who famously sipped amaretto from his Gucci loafer—fluttered away over $2.5 billion in handshake oil loans.
Penn Square sold many of those dubious loans to major banks, such as Continental Illinois of Chicago, Chase Manhattan, and Seafirst Seattle (now part of Bank of America), which were eager for their own stake in the bonanza. Continental was the largest commercial bank in the Midwest and itself an aggressive energy lender. When prices finally dropped, the loans from Penn Square were enough to push Continental off the cliff, making it the largest American bank to go under (until Washington Mutual in 2008). Its $4.5 billion bailout from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation became, at the time, the biggest in American history, and introduced the term “too big to fail” into the lexicon.
The collapse reached the Permian Basin in July 1983, when Metro Bank in Midland went under, followed by National Bank of Odessa. Each reopened the next day under different names. Then, on October 14, 1983, Texans turned on the evening news and discovered that the unthinkable had taken place. First National Bank of Midland, the true king of the oil patch, had also gone down. The near century-old lifeline to cattlemen and dry landers, benefactor to civic groups and Little Leaguers alike, was gone.
First National’s president, Charles Fraser, hadn’t squandered a single moment in the boom. He’d brought in every wildcatter, oil company honcho, and man off the street who thought they could make a buck. At First National, people said, any one banker could approve an oil loan, but it took two to turn one down. And with pump jacks dancing, it seemed like a sound policy. As a result, First National swelled to become not only the largest independent bank in Texas, but in all the United States, with assets totaling $1.3 billion, and its collapse would stand as the second-biggest in American history.
Fraser wasn’t a showboat like Patterson, and many argued that his freewheeling handouts were justified in order to sustain the country’s fastest-growing city. But like so many others, Fraser got greedy, and by the time it was too late, hundreds of millions in loans were in jeopardy and the feds were in the books, carving up his portfolio. The bank sold its own glass tower to stay above water, but over $600 million in lost deposits finally put it under. The Comptroller of the Currency finally declared the bank insolvent on October 14, a day people still refer to as Black Friday. At the same time, the FDIC arranged a humiliating takeover by RepublicBank of Dallas.
Republic assumed only $250 million of First National’s $1.3 billion debt portfolio, leaving the FDIC to try and collect on the rest. A slick New Yorker in lizard boots stepped in—Thomas Procopio, an FDIC agent who became known around the region as the “Liquidator-in-Charge.” Almost overnight, his agency became one of the biggest creditors in the Permian Basin; within two years, it would be one of its largest employers. Among the holdings it secured from First National was the huge tract of land where the bank had planned to build two more skyscrapers. It also held condominiums, office buildings, scores of homes, oil wells, luxury cars, even rights to books and movies.
Procopio’s office would come to staff over three hundred people charged with recovering the bank’s debt. The yellow FOR SALE—FDIC signs became a common sight across the oil patch, but in order to sell the properties, the government needed to know what each one was worth.
To help with this enormous task, they hired a man in Big Spring named Jeff Brown—and with him, my father.
* * *
Jeff and his wife, Sue, owned Home Real Estate, the firm where Mom worked. During World War II Jeff had flown B-24 bombers and still wore his hair in an airman’s buzz cut. A fat cigar usually sat clenched between his teeth. Jeff ran his firm’s appraisal division, and lately Mom had noticed that he could use an extra hand. The week after Dad quit Grady he called Jeff, who hired him after a brief interview.
Originally, Dad’s job was to conduct research on sales comparisons in and around Big Spring. This entailed photographing properties, pulling deeds and tax cards at the courthouse, then using that information to determine the value. Jeff paid $125 a day, plus Dad could sell his own real estate for a straight commission. But two months into the job, the FDIC called Jeff, asking his help. Within days he and Dad had more work than they could manage.
Each morning, Dad drove the forty miles to Midland and appraised the fallout of the bust: half-built condominiums frozen in midair; acres of vacant office space and miles of metal buildings, once busy with tomorrow men, now padlocked and quiet, their white caliche yards full of weeds; tracts of raw land, now
relinquished back to horny toads and tumbleweed; warehouses and apartment buildings; a convenience store.
With each property, Dad snapped photographs and toured the surrounding area for comps. He pulled deeds and copied tax cards, then drove back to Big Spring. With every trip, he passed the stacks of discarded drill pipe along the highway growing bigger and slowly turning to rust.
Dad was only an apprentice, but the amount of work became so great that Jeff taught him how to do more, then let him keep the commissions. Soon Dad was able to earn the same money as he had with Grady, and this irony did not escape him. Much like his father selling blowdirt in the drought, or his uncle and cousin hauling starved cattle off the pastures, he too had found his niche on the bottom, like a catfish in a muddy river. But there was still that $30,000 loan.
* * *
No one seemed more worried about Dad’s debts than Bob. Each time Dad stopped by the house, Bob tried giving him money. “Just take this here,” he’d say, pushing a wad of bills into his hand. But Dad always refused.
“The Lord’ll take care of it,” he’d say, and Opal would nod her head.
“That’s right, baby. You give it to Jesus.”
“The Lord will provide,” he repeated, trying to ignore the clawing in his gut.
Ever since quitting Grady, Dad had started having breakfast with his father on his way to work. By the time he arrived at seven thirty, Bob was standing over the stove finishing the bacon and eggs. They sat at the bar with cups of black coffee and drizzled honey into hot buttered biscuits, and Bob would say, “If there were canned biscuits when I was young, I never would have married,” causing Opal to roll her eyes. After she left for work, in a streak of green silk and perfume, Dad and his father stayed and talked.
As a grown man with children of his own and some recent disappointments, Dad had come to see his father differently. No longer did he feel ashamed of the dump trucks and piles of dirt, or the family backstory of poverty and sour luck. The past few years had aged him and bestowed hard lessons: like how quickly the world will reduce a man who turns against his raising, or how much a fool was willing to risk for a little glitter and influence. To remain steady was the greatest virtue, and his father, through boom and bust, had stayed true to himself and the people who loved him, even if he was temperamental. But even that side of Bob had mellowed, thanks to Brother Rick Jones.
Bob’s mellowing had also come by way of personal loss. In March 1982, his sister Fannie passed away unexpectedly, delivering him a terrible blow. She’d left a doctor’s appointment one afternoon and driven toward the cemetery to visit her son Bobby, who’d died in a car wreck in 1963. Although she tended Bobby’s grave each week, her normal route seemed different all of a sudden. In fact, the city had erected detours because her sons’ company was doing paving work on one of the main thoroughfares. Fannie wound up on a desolate back road, where she tried to turn the car around. But heavy rains had left the shoulders muddy, and her wheels got stuck. It wasn’t until the next morning that a sheriff’s deputy spotted her little Chevrolet. There she was inside, slumped against the wheel and dead from a heart attack. She’d run her car out of gas and spun the tires bald trying to get free. “Scared herself to death,” Bob said. Fannie was eighty-three.
In 1979, his beloved sister Allie had died from heart disease after a long stay in the hospital. Her headaches, which had come the instant she learned her son Orville had been killed in the war, persisted until her final hour. Her husband, Tom, had maintained Orville’s shrine in their home until he passed away that spring. For Bob, losing Allie had been like losing his mother for the second time, except now he was grown enough to bear the pain in full. Allie had been the one to raise him after Fannie ran off with Abe Jones to the North Texas fields. She cooked his meals, scrubbed their clothes against a washboard until her hands were raw. And it was Allie who’d guided him into the deep red water of the cattle tank and taught him how to swim.
Rheumatoid arthritis had left her bent and dependent on a cane, then a walker, and finally a wheelchair, though she still maneuvered around her tiny house trying to cook and clean for Tom. At the funeral home viewing, Bob saw not a broken old woman but the girl they once called Skinny Legs, who at one time had been so beautiful.
The year before losing Allie, his friend Davey Jones had suffered a stroke and died. His kids had buried him with a pair of dice in his hand and a five-dollar bill tucked into his pocket, hoping he could roll Saint Peter in a game and make it through the gates. Now that Davey was gone, Bob couldn’t get behind the wheel of a truck and not think of him.
Around the time Bob lost Allie, Dad’s sister Norma Lou suffered a series of health problems that caused Bob even greater stress. She nearly died undergoing hip replacement surgery when the doctors couldn’t get her to stop bleeding. Each day Bob and Opal drove sixty miles to Odessa to see their daughter in the hospital, forgoing work and everything else.
Calamity had a way of stalking Norma. After losing her first husband, Bill Glaesman, in a truck accident, she’d married another man, James Saunders, and had a second boy, named Randy. They moved to Duncan, Oklahoma, where James worked as a salesman. One night he was moonlighting at his brother’s nightclub when he tried to break up a bar fight. In the melee someone stabbed James in the chest and he died three weeks later. Norma’s third marriage ended in divorce.
On top of it all, Bob’s own health was failing. He’d given everyone a scare back in August when a big group of them flew to Anaheim for the General Council meeting of the Assemblies of God. The first day there, Bob complained that his shoulder hurt. His feet and legs were also starting to swell. While the others left to hear Pat Boone and Jim Bakker, Bob stayed behind at the hotel, venturing out only once—to his balcony, where he shouted to the prostitutes working the convention traffic to inquire if they offered senior discounts. “They don’t,” he assured Opal.
Back in Big Spring, the pain and swelling grew worse, so Bob went to see Dr. Clyde Thomas, Raymond Tollett’s doctor, who diagnosed him with congestive heart failure. After a week in the hospital Bob finally went home, but with instructions not to eat salt or drink coffee. “And I don’t want you working on those trucks, either,” Dr. Thomas said.
Bob had no intention of quitting coffee. He drank it morning until night. But Opal really cracked down on the salt, and the result was misery. Worse, the dirt business was slow. Days passed when he didn’t get a call, only adding to his depression. The two Fords sat idle in back like a pair of stabled thoroughbreds—tires checked, joints greased—just waiting to run. Whenever Bob got the itch to take them out, to feel the rumble beneath him, he took us kids for a ride.
Bob’s favorite place to go was Gibson’s Discount Store. The one in Big Spring was located on Scurry Street, on the site of the old tourist court where his father, John Lewis, had died. He went there nearly every day to look at tools and fishing gear, and to sniff out deals on coffee and toilet paper, which he hoarded out in the shed.
But he liked the Gibson’s in Odessa much better. It was bigger, and whenever Bob visited Norma Lou, he insisted they go shopping. One Sunday in early October 1983, Bob and Opal drove to Norma’s after church to have lunch. She was back on her feet from hip surgery, enough to fix her father his favorite pot roast. After eating, the three of them drove to the store. But once there, Bob took ten steps inside and said, “You know, I don’t need anything,” then turned and walked back to the car.
Norma called Dad that night and said, “Something’s not right with Daddy. For some reason I’m really worried.”
* * *
The next morning, Bob discovered a flat on one of his trucks. Defying both Opal and Dr. Thomas, he rolled out his jack, hoisted off the giant radial, and patched the tube. When he finished, he drove to the caliche pit for a load.
There was a confrontation with one of his helpers. The man had trouble maneuvering the tractor because the power steering was out. So Bob, frustrated, ran over in a huff and motioned t
he guy off the wheel, then wrenched the machine into submission. After loading his own truck, he pulled out of the yard in a cloud of dust.
Back at the house, Opal was waiting with his lunch, but Bob said he didn’t feel well.
“If you don’t mind, I’m gonna take a nap,” he said, then walked back to the bedroom. Opal wrapped his food and left it on the stove. When she returned that evening, it was still there. She found Bob in bed. His body was cold.
The first thing she did was call Herman at the restaurant. “I think Bob’s dead!” she shouted. It was Homer who arrived minutes later and attempted CPR, but there was no point. Papaw was gone.
The next call she made was to our house. Mom’s mother was visiting from Snyder and all of us had just sat down for dinner. I watched Mom get up and answer the telephone, then drop the receiver and run out the front door. Somebody then managed to get hold of Dad at work. They all gathered in Bob and Opal’s bedroom and waited for the coroner. Bob was sixty-nine years old.
His funeral was held later that week at the funeral-home chapel, where Brother Jones led the service and wept. It was the first time I’d seen so many grown-ups cry, especially my own father, and the first I’d experienced death. (Three months later, when another heart attack finally killed Uncle Herman, I asked Mom to let me stay home from the funeral.)
That day, Brother Jones spoke about how Bob had embraced the Lord in recent years, how he’d been proud to see him living a Christian life. Opal then read out a letter the pastor had written to Bob months earlier that reflected the same sentiments. If anyone carried doubts about the fate of Bob’s soul, these words put them to rest.
As for Dad, he found his own kind of solace in his father’s sudden passing. On the day of Bob’s death, he’d stopped by for his usual breakfast, and on the way out the door, he made sure to tell his dad that he loved him. He held tightly to that now. And he also understood that whatever he’d lost financially by coming to Big Spring and joining Grady, he’d gained in a relationship with his father. In fact, he now believed that that was the sole reason we’d come to Big Spring in the first place. That was the journey. The whole ordeal, like every other day on earth, was a puff of smoke, a chasing after the wind. Life was fleeting; you had to hold fast to what was true.
