The Hollow Men - Episode 5
While many of his peers move into adulthood, Drew avoids growing up, his sister Elizabeth takes up cooking, Andrea is ready to move on with life and Rick proposes a business deal to Drew.
Last week in Episode 4 the legend of El Guitarra tequila teaches the gang another lesson about the dangers of drinking, Drew has a horrible Saturday and Barry tells a tale of a fight with Jack-in-the-Box.
If you need to catch up with things feel free to start with Episode 1 of The Hollow Men. It provides an overview of the main players in this new collection of not quite true tales of Texas in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Occasionally a too sweet home life
Most of our class of 1976 were 19 or 20 years old the summer of 1977. Some were already married. Some were full-time in the work force. Some had gone off to college. So many of my peers had started playing the full time adult game.
Then there was me,. I was doing almost everything I could to avoid being a real, full-time adult. I had a part time job. I was taking just enough hours at Odessa College to call myself a full-time student, but I wasn’t stressing about it much. I was a part-time boyfriend, seeing Andrea once a month. I was avoiding responsibility as much as I possibly could. I wasn’t ready to move from home, just didn’t see a point in it. My parents gave me a fair amount of freedom. As long as I didn’t take too much advantage of my freedom, kept my job, and kept my grades up they mostly left me alone. Mom was glad I was a full time student at Odessa College. Dad was glad I was working and, though I would never admit it to him, was following his career advice of walking up the stairs versus climbing up a ladder. I was making slow, steady progress towards this thing called adulthood and I was more than content with the pace of things.
Rick was almost in the same situation, just a little more serious in all things. More serious about school. More serious about work. More serious about money. I guess he had some kind of long-term plan because from what I could tell he had to be saving a lot of money, because he sure didn’t seem to be spending much of it. He was living at home, rent free, just like me.
Life at home wasn’t bad. Life wasn’t bad at all.
My Dad was still an oil field representative at Cody & Teague, spending his days and some nights out in the oil field, driving from rig site to rig site. He averaged over 100,000 miles a year driving a company Ford Custom 500. In January of every year he would turn in last year’s model for the latest Custom 500 and start racking up the miles all over again. He would occasionally get on my case when he thought I was staying out too late, but he liked that I didn’t seem to be developing any real bad habits. I kept the yard mowed and clean so he had no complaints about that. I kept Kaiser well-fed and exercised and took over the role of taking him to his annual visit with the Vet. Other than being hit by the occasional run away trailer I kept my Dad’s old truck, my truck, in good shape.
My worst vice was playing golf, but Golden Acres was my home course because it was the best deal in town and I wasn’t one of those idiots who felt they needed to play a fancy course so they could be challenged. I still missed enough fairways and greens that I didn’t have the right to brag too much about my game. If I ever did get too cocky about my game I had complete faith Pete, Lanny or Larry Dean or any others of the Golden Acres crew would set me straight by taking more than a few dollars out of my pocket.
My sister Elizabeth was basically everything I was not. She finished up her last year at Bonham as a cheerleader, member of the National Honor Society, Student Council president, president of the Speech Club and a solid member in the ninth grade choir.
Elizabeth did not let the grass grow under her feet. I was always looking for a fresh patch of grass to lay upon. She liked to be involved. I do not. She filled up the air with her words. I try to use as few words as I possibly can. Ask her how was her day and thirty minutes would pass during which she would provide a surprisingly detailed and entertaining account of her day.
The summer of 1977 Elizabeth put together her plan for success at Permian. It was a well thought out plan. I know that for a fact because throughout the summer if she caught me off guard she would walk me through every step of the plan. By the time the summer was over I knew the plan as well as she did.
Her Permian Success Plan, which she called her PSP, was not the only thing she focused on that summer. Our Mom had been working full-time in downtown Odessa for the last year as a way to have extra money for Christmas, birthdays and vacations. Elizabeth decided to help Mom out by taking a bigger role in keeping the house clean and cooking some of the meals. Only problem was that cooking was the one thing that Elizabeth didn’t seem to be naturally good at.
Elizabeth’s first experiment in cooking was breakfast one Saturday morning early in the summer. Sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy, a true Southern breakfast and something I never turn down if offered to me.
What most people do not realize is that cooking is as much science as it is art. You’ve got to pay attention to the details or the results will not be as expected. That Saturday morning the eggs, biscuit and sausage were surprisingly good. Not as good as Mom on her best days, but totally edible and with the proper amount of pepper very satisfying. The gravy turned things in a different direction.
Let me set the stage, or as the French might say “mise en place.” Milk, grease and flour are the key ingredients of white gravy. Add in some salt, pepper, maybe replace the grease with butter and you’re good.
Here’s where things went strange. Turns out my Mom felt she had gained a little too much weight in the last year or so. She was trying to eat healthier and was using a product called Metrecal as an occasional liquid meal supplement. Her favorite flavor of Metrecal was Vanilla and she kept a couple of cans in the refrigerator at all times. The Friday morning before Elizabeth’s breakfast of sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy Mom had poured her Metrecal Vanilla into a glass, had a couple of sips with her morning coffee, realized she was running late that morning and needed to leave for work. Being a thrifty person, never wanting to waste anything or throw anything away, she put her glass of Metrecal in the refrigerator and left for work.
That glass of Metrecal Vanilla was still in the refrigerator Saturday morning as Elizabeth made breakfast. Being the wonderful brother I am I asked Elizabeth if she needed any help, confident that Elizabeth, being the controlling person she is, would say she had everything under control. Being the controlling person she is Elizabeth said she didn’t need my help.
Mom, Dad and I sat in the living room while Elizabeth prepared breakfast. Mom and Dad drank their morning coffee while I drank my morning iced tea. We all read the morning edition of The Odessa American while Kaiser, sitting near the kitchen arch, continually sniffed the breakfast smells emanating from the kitchen.
The busy sounds of cooking from the kitchen came to a close and Elizabeth told us breakfast was ready. She had each of our plates ready, including Kaiser’s own plate of scrambled eggs and sausage. All of us humans had two eggs, two pieces of sausage, and two biscuits covered in gravy. My Dad and I put a liberal amount of pepper on our eggs, biscuits and gravy.
And we dug in. Everyone’s first bites was of the sausage and egg and appreciative murmurs were heard. My Dad was the first to take a bite of his biscuits and gravy. I was second. That first bite was, shall I say, not as expected. The gravy was strangely sweet, not savory. I chewed, wondering what was going on. I looked at my Dad and he had a strange, confused look on his face. We didn’t know what to say or if we should say anything at all. Mom took the third bite. The perfect woman, who so rarely said the wrong thing, chewed quietly but looked at my Dad and at me with a look that was clear and strong. We knew then the right choice was to say something, but to lie.
My Dad said in his usual colorful way “Hell, Elizabeth, this is has got to be the most flavorful gravy I have ever had.”
I nodded my head in agreement and murmured positive sounds.
Elizabeth beamed with pride and then took her first bite of her biscuits and gravy. She chewed slowly, then stopped chewing, picked up her napkin and demurely spit her bite of biscuits and gravy into the napkin.
All was quiet. My Dad and I decided the best thing to do was to keep eating. We each took a second bite of biscuits and gravy. It was Mom who cracked. She looked at Elizabeth and smiled. Then she giggled, and then she laughed hard and long. Elizabeth had a look of shock on her face but as she watched Mom laugh she began to giggle and laugh.
Mom, who had recognized the saccharinely sweet taste of Metrecal in the gravy, took a breath in between laughs and said “Elizabeth, that is the best Metrecal Vanilla gravy I have ever had.” All of us, save for Kaiser who was not a laughing dog, laughed at that.
A few days later Elizabeth presented what might have been the first example in west Texas of a Cajun cooking technique most often associated with seafood. That day we had hamburgers with a side of blackened french fries.
Luckily, after a few stumbles, Elizabeth applied all of her talents and by the end of the summer was a good cook. She knew her future was not in the culinary arts, but her meals were more than edible.
Falls the shadow
“How’s the tank business?”
I had been at SouthWestern Tank for right on a year when Rick asked me that question. Well, that’s not exactly true. The question had come up before in casual conversation, but this time the question led to a whole new line of thinking for both of us.
Normally, I answered with a mumble, a “doing good” or a “shut the hell up.” This time I answered differently.
“Not bad, we’re busy, really too busy. We hardly have to do any selling, most of the business just walks in the door, but there’s some disconnects going on.”
“Disconnects, what do you mean by that?”
“You know how Mr. Johnson likes selling tanks, putting them out in the yard outside the building? Well, that works well for a lot of our customers, but there’s some, particularly the bigger pipelines, chemical plants, refineries and oil companies that want their tanks delivered straight to their yard, coated, hooked up, ready to go and online. And, they’re willing to pay for it.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“At first, not much. In some cases, the big companies have taken care of all the details. In other cases, we’ve acted as the contractor, arranging for the trucker, the coating, setting up the safety scaffolding, the hookup, and sending the bills directly to the company that bought the tank in the first place. But, then they didn’t like it. Instead of one bill for a tank, they had five, six, seven. They asked us to handle the billing, but that’s money out of SouthWestern Tank’s pockets, and a business that Mr. Johnson isn’t interested in. He’s happy making tanks, and he’s managed to make a good living at that.”
Yeah, I answered his question with more than what was necessary, but sometimes that kind of rambling leads to something.
Rick thought it over for a couple of minutes.
“Seems like there might be a way to make money in the gap.”
“Gap?”
“Yeah, the gap between what SouthWestern is willing to provide and what some of your customers want.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Imagine if there was someone who bought the tank from SouthWestern, acted as a contractor with the trucking company, the coating company, the scaffolding company and the hookup company to get all the work done, the tank delivered to the customer’s yard or plant and brought it on line, all the while marking up the costs and services. Everyone is happy, SouthWestern Tank because all they have to do is make tanks, the trucker is happy, the coater is happy, the scaffolder is happy, the hookup is happy, the customer is happy, because they all get what they want.”
Imagine is what we did for the next several months. Nearly every week we ran through the idea, from nose to tail and back again. I was the hard one to convince. Things were going all right for me. I enjoyed working at SouthWestern Tank, most days I had tanks and vessels to draw and I had gotten good enough to do it even with a bad hangover. Some days I did a little selling on the phone and some days I went out with Ned, Jim or Carey out to the fields to bid on new jobs. All the while, I was going to Odessa College and dating Andrea about once a month. At end of my first year at Odessa College I had a good GPA comfortably above 3.5 and 39 hours for my first year at college. I was taking twelve hours this semester so I could get in a few more hours at SouthWestern Tank and make a little more money. I liked the feeling of $200 in my pocket on any given day of the week. It was a good life, not one bit or angle of it was too challenging. That’s why I was nervous about what Rick and I were talking about, because it meant work, real work, and there was an element of chance in it.
But the premise seemed sound and the idea was really rather simple. We would have little capital or expense, essentially no overhead. The plan was to bid for tank jobs with major companies, but instead of offering only the tank, we would offer everything. But we would do nothing, nothing but arrange for others to do all the work. For that we would take a markup on everything. If you needed something fast, we might take a lot of markup. If you’re not in too much of a hurry, we’d cut our markup. If you were willing to buy from us for a while, say over the next year or so, we would be willing to keep prices relatively firm, in line with where material and labor costs were at. The key was there was very little chance we would lose money as our prices to our customers would be based on a cost plus approach.
From one perspective, it seemed like a cheat, making money off of doing what essentially seemed to be nothing, but at the same time, providing a service that seemed few were willing to provide, a service that some were willing to pay for. Maybe that was part of my doubt, I wondered if the idea was really right, ethical. Sometimes I thought of the whole idea as a lie. Rick didn’t agree with that line of thinking at all.
“It’s not a lie, not a lie at all. All we would be doing is tying all the pieces together, and provide the customers, all the customers, with what they want. The problem with lying is you have to remember what version of the truth you’re spinning your latest lie from. We can’t afford this with what we’re trying to do. We need to always tell the truth.”
“Come on, we would be nothing more than acting as brokers. Don’t make this into anything more than that.”
“You’re right, we would be nothing more than brokers. From one perspective, we would be nothing but overhead, overhead to the companies that make the tanks, overhead to the companies that use the tanks in the fields. Overhead to everyone in between. But we would provide a service, a service that has value, that isn’t easily provided right now.”
When you come down to it, our business plan was to make something out of nothing. From one perspective we were offering nothing to no one. On the other hand, we stood in between those who made things and those who wanted to buy the things that were made. All we would do was take what was made and make it a little better, and for that little effort we had a chance to make a lot of money.
Yeah, we had a chance to make a lot of money as long as the environment tolerated that kind of waste and markup. That’s what made me nervous. Sooner or later, the price of oil was going to drop, the oil industry would slump and there would be little spare money. When that happened, there would be no spare money for a company that made money by doing what others weren’t willing to do. I felt like I needed a way to know when it was time to get out. I needed a plan for getting out while the getting was still good.
In between drawings, in between calls, on the way to work, on the way to school, on the way home, in those quiet moments of the day, I let my mind run over Rick’s idea. I knew how much a tank cost, I knew how much profit there was in it, I had a decent idea how much it took to move a tank from our yard down the road to the next yard, I had a good idea of what coating and scaffolding cost. About the only thing I wasn’t really sure of what the cost of the hook up in the field was. But that was the beauty of our plan, it didn’t matter what the cost for anything was, we would take the cost, mark it up a bit and pass on the cost plus markup to the customer.
Rick was looking into things from the other end. He talked with a few folks out in the plants and the oil companies and casually asked what they might expect to pay for a tank set up on line in the field. When we put together what we knew we saw our idea made sense. There was room between the costs of what we wanted to do and what companies were willing to pay for having the tanks on line in their fields and plants.
1977 came to an end and that's when I learned part of my life was going to change without my approval. Andrea had been racking up the hours, taking a full load every semester and courses during the summer as well. At the end of the fall semester she had 61 hours. Truth is, I wasn't far behind with 51 hours, but where she was speeding the process up, I was slowing it down, spending more time on work than I was on school. We were drifting apart, a fact I didn't realize that until December of 1977. Class was out for the holiday break. Andrea and I had gone out for dinner and a movie about a week before Christmas when I learned of her plans.
Over appetizers she said “I'm going to West Texas State University in January.”
I didn't react at first.
“Drew, did you hear me? I'm going to Canyon in January.”
It sunk in. She was going off to school. In January. It would be a little hard to keep dating since she would be three hours away. I thought it over and really didn't have much to say.
“Damn. I didn't know. When you did you decide this?”
“Awhile back. I've been dropping hints to you since this summer. I guess you didn't pick up on them.”
“No, no, I didn't. I did not. Completely missed it. Wow, January. Wow. What does that mean for us?”
“Not a lot. It isn't like we're serious, right? I mean, you call me once a week, we go out about once a month, but we've never gone beyond that. We're friends, well, more than friends, but I don't think we've ever been a real couple. Have we?”
I couldn't disagree. It had been a convenient relationship, but it wasn't a deep relationship. When there was a date like thing to do we did it, but I sure didn't make an effort at it. Personally, I thought that had been enough, I thought we could keep this going on for, well, hell, for a long time. Turns out Andrea had other plans.
We talked more, but she had made her decision. She wanted to get on with life, finish her degree, start a career and was worried I was getting too comfortable with my life, taking some hours at Odessa College, working at SouthWestern Tank, playing golf on the weekend and having too many hangovers a week for her taste. We never made it to the movie and I wound up taking her home about 10:30. I dropped by a convenience store, picked up a six pack of Coors and drove over to Boulder park, found a picnic bench and drank to the night.
January came, Andrea left for Canyon. I signed up for nine hours at Odessa College.
Truth is Andrea was right, I was comfortable, maybe too much for my own good. Rick kept talking about our idea and I kept rolling it over in my head.
Then one day in April, it all came together. I was at Odessa College, rummaging through the library, researching for a paper in English Lit class. I ended up skimming through a book of poetry and came across the poem “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Elliot and this line caught my eye:
“between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.”
That’s where Rick and I were trying to go, between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act. We were the shadow. That’s when I came up with a name for our company.
That evening, over a couple of beers I told Rick that I was in and that had a name for our company: PV Tanks.
Rick thought for a moment and said “Hmm, PV Tanks... well, it fits. No one here seems to ever come up with a company name that has any real zing to it, and this one fits just nice. I’m a little surprised that’s what you came up with.”
“That’s the idea. It sounds right, it fits in with everything that’s here. But there’s a meaning to it. The PV stands for Physical and Virtual. Physical, because we deliver tanks to those who want them. Virtual because there’s really nothing there, we’re in between the idea and reality, the motion and the act.” I told him about “The Hollow Men.”
“Got it, but let’s switch it around to VP Tanks. Sounds prestigious, like Vice President, but also it won’t confuse anyone, since PV could be interpreted as polyvinyl.”
We had it. We had the idea and we had the name: VP Tanks. All we needed to do was make it real.
Author’s notes
As I’ve been prepping each episode I wind up editing a bit and in some cases, like this week, add in new material. I hadn’t mentioned Drew’s sister Elizabeth in quite some time and I thought the tale of Metrecal gravy was a good way to bring her back to the story.
The tag line for these stories is “a collection of not quiet true tales.” Pretty much everything you read in these stories has an element of truth in it. So it is for Metrceal gravy. If you are not sure what Metrecal is this Wikipedia article provides a good summary.
I am the youngest of three siblings. My brother Steve is ten years older than me and my sister Lanita is 12 years older than me. Though we are all technically of the Baby Boom generation, the 10 and 12 year age gap was enough that it felt that we were in separate generations. Lanita married and moved to Pecos when I was six. Steve moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas when I was eight.
Lanita is one of the most extroverted and confident people I have ever known. She could talk to anyone and would, and seemed to know something about everything and everyone.
Our mother worked full time in downtown Odessa during all of my childhood. I remember Lanita cooking meals for Steve and me during the summer breaks. One morning after our mother had left for work Lanita confidently made a fancy breakfast of sausage, eggs, biscuits and Metrecal gravy. She had mistaken a glass of Metrecal Vanilla in the refrigerator for a glass of milk. She wasn’t pleased with the result and with a cold stare dared Steve and I to complain. We were not fools and did not complain.
Next week in Episode 6 of The Hollow Men a young woman disappears and Rick and Drew start their business.