We were talking about a guy with whom I had many years of a love/hate relationship which included a lot of pot holes and a lot of smooth roads. Our relationship was a mix of love fests and threatened law suits (one of my favorite things).
Gordon Stollery was one of the few people that God blessed with unbelievable charm. He could charm a snake out of a tree. He was also a brilliant business man but whose word bordered on useless.
Changing his mind, often and mostly always, was Gordon's specialty. He often drove my fucking blood pressure to unsustainable levels, but in the end he had more pluses than minuses and I grew to love him, but it wasn't easy getting there. Even my first meeting with Gordon was one for the books. An ex-best friend of mine Donald Textor, who at the time was the senior oil and gas analyst at Goldman Sachs (aka Goldman Sucks) introduced me to Gordon. We had dinner at Lutece, very terrific and upscale (aka expensive). I paid.
Elaine Textor, great gal, and my most recent ex-wife Betsy, were there too. All five of us snapped shit when a very pregnant woman at the adjoining table went into what turned out to be an epileptic fit which included that poor broad rolling around on the floor. While the woman quickly recovered, I still, some 30 years later, remember that hair raising experience. Thank God I haven't had epilepsy, though I've had zillions of fits. Up like a rocket, down like a stick is my mantra but with no threat of swallowing my tongue, in spite of two ex-wives’ sincere wishes that I would both swallow my tongue and then choke on it.
My notion was to raise a natural gas gathering systems, private equity fund to be invested in Canada and managed by Gordon's company; a financing method that had never been done in the Canadian oil and gas business. My proposal to Gordon was that I would raise $US100 million ($US500m adjusted for inflation). Gordon in turn would finance the fundraising and I would go on the board to protect the investor's interests. Gordon had a tough time wrapping his mind around the idea that I could raise $US100m for his $C75m his public company, Morrison Petroleum plus financing me. According to Gordon the success of the deal, and it was very fucking successful, catapulted him into the elite of the independent oil and gas business in Calgary.
Calgary, for me, was the last of the Wild West towns. If you weren't always looking over your shoulder and paranoid to boot, you were going to get fucked. And in those days my paranoia wasn't strong enough. But my paranoia did catch up quickly with reality.
Before Gordo, I had consulted for Great Basins Petroleum, a company based in Calgary and run by Jack Wahl. Jack was the ultimate 'piece of work’. He was born in Illinois, went to school in Oklahoma studying petroleum engineering. Started as a petroleum engineer in the States then moved around for tax reasons, like a whore on Saturday night. Jack renounced U.S. citizenship to become a Canadian citizen for a more favorable tax consideration. Then he took on citizenship of the Bahamas to avoid Canadian taxes. Jack was not a straight up crook though he could be very misleading and always on the edge. His promises had the earmarks of trying to grasp a slab of mercury slithering around in the palm of your hand. Really tough to do.
Jack, as a speaker, was very fucking boring. He also insisted on slides with his presentation. I pleaded with him not to use slides. The lights went off. Jack started talking, everyone started dozing off. The last time I organized a lunch/presentation for about 150 analysts, stock brokers and money managers at the World Trade Center in N.Y., Jack was so outrageous that even in my greed I made it the last time ever. He included in his presentation slides a drilling prospect that sounded terrific. After the lunch I commented that I didn't know that Great Basins owned that prospect. He said the company didn't own it but was negotiating for it. I went nuts. He had talked up a prospect that he didn't own as though he owned it. That was the last time in the Great Basins public relations barrel for me.
A few months earlier Jack commissioned me to find him a buyer for that piece of shit. Not negotiate, just find him a buyer. I was to be paid $US75k (1970 dollars). After finding him a buyer he refused to pay me and I went off the wall. His CFO knew of the arrangement, was authorized to write up to $US25k and pleaded with me to settle, without a lawsuit, for the $25k, which I did. Jack had a super smart knock out wife and as a hunter, a collection of trophy heads to go along with his trophy wife. I missed seeing his wife again but not Jack and his God damn hunting souvenirs. He was a total bum.
My most memorable event in Calgary was when I stepped into the elevator at the International Hotel, one very cold night and there was a young, not too attractive, gal already in the elevator. When the doors closed she grabbed my scrotum and asked if I would like a 'trick'. I was so startled that I didn't even get a hard on. No, I didn't succumb to her hand charms.
Calgary in those days was loaded with hookers. They would walk up and down 4th where some hotels were located or hang out in front of a 'club' called The French Maid (Not my style. Too lowdown, even for me). In the winter they rode the elevators propositioning guys, sometimes by grabbing their balls. Never worked for me.
Ole Gordon, sometimes hateable, but in the end very loveable..…for another blog.
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