Recognizing the Running W brand

Vertis and I had been married less than two years when I got my first job out of college. I got off the elevator on the wrong floor of a building in Houston where I was looking for a job, and it happened to be where Exxon’s southwest regional exploration offices were located.

I had been turned down by Exxon at its main office the day before, but figured what the heck? and walked in. I took a deep breath and said to the receptionist, “I’m Richard Mason and I have a master’s degree in geology from the University of Arkansas. I’d like to meet with the exploration manager if he’s available.”

I figured it was more than a long shot, but in a couple of minutes she returned. “Mr. Loftis is available, and he will see you.”

I followed the young lady into Mr. Loftis’ office, and as I walked up to meet him, he said, “Well, how’s Kern Jackson doing?” Dr. Jackson was my faculty adviser.

“He’s the smartest geologist I’ve ever been around,” said Mr. Loftis.

I got the job as a production geologist on King Ranch in south Texas. Several geologists from Exxon’s Denver office had turned down the job and transfer. I had never heard of Kingsville, but was desperate. He could have offered me a job anywhere, and I would have accepted it.

Early in the development of the oil and gas fields by Humble Oil and Refining Company, the original leaseholders, there was company housing, later converted to geological and engineering offices.

Today the Exxon offices are in downtown Kingsville. It’s a true company town, founded by the King family. When Humble took the original oil and gas lease during the Depression, it was for over a million acres, and the price was said to be $3.50/acre. Some writers have noted that lease money kept the Ranch solvent.

Working on the Ranch required a pass, which I showed every day as I drove to work. The property has strict rules concerning access, and with an abundance of wildlife including javelinas, deer, and quail, driving to work was like driving through a wildlife refuge.

Hunting was strictly controlled, and Exxon, which valued a good relationship with the Ranch, made breaking any significant rules a cause for immediate termination. Shortly after I went to work, one of the company’s geologists shot a deer on the Ranch, dragged it over to where he had a lease on other property, and tagged it there. The Ranch fence riders figured it out. When Exxon got the news, the geologist was fired.

The King Ranch was founded by Richard King, a former riverboat captain who bought an old Spanish land grant and slowly added to it until it was well over a million acres. As the story goes, when the need for more workers on the Ranch occurred, he went into northern Mexico and hired an entire village.

One of the Ranch’s outstanding achievements was the creation of a superior breed of beef cattle. Through careful interbreeding with several breeds including Brahman and Hereford, it produced the Santa Gertrudis breed. All Santa Gertrudis cattle come from one foundation, a bull named Monkey.

As the original herd increased, the Ranch’s yearly bull sale was a feature event; buyers came from across the country.

When we were in Kingsville, the Kleberg family portion of the original King family was in charge of what had become a multi-milliondollar family corporation. A reporter once asked Bob Kleberg (husband of Richard and Henrietta King’s daughter Alice) what made Santa Gertrudis cattle thrive on the ranch. He replied, “They seem to do better in the shade of Christmas trees”—a sly comment referring to the huge oil and gas drilling rigs on the Ranch.

Before Edna Ferber wrote the novel “Giant” (published in 1952), she supposedly met with Ranch owners who were interviewing writers to compose the property’s history. Ferber was very interested, but the Ranch family turned her down because they wanted it to be non-fiction.

The setting in her novel (and subsequent movie, released in 1956, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean) is in west Texas, but it’s obvious a lot of it is based on Ferber’s exposure to King Ranch. The movie theater in Kingsville refused to show the movie, which some observers thought portrayed the treatment of Hispanics in Texas unfairly.

In the novel, Ferber describes Liz Benedict, played by Taylor in the movie, this way: “Liz just wanted to be the best dressed woman in Kleberg County.” Kleberg County is the home of the King Ranch.

We loved our two years living in Kingsville. We made some lifelong friends, developed a taste for true Mexican food, and were exposed to the corporate world of a major oil company. It set a foundation for a successful marriage and a career.

Those two years gave us the opportunity to travel deep into Mexico and fish in the Gulf. The geological training was an invaluable contribution to my career. After a few months I was put in charge of picking drilling locations in Borregos Field, one of the largest on the Ranch.

Our time there solidified a strong foundation for our marriage, and allowed me to apply my education directly to my job.