“MOORE,” intoned my old friend and law school buddy, John Castleton, “you’ve got an acre of knowledge an inch deep!” As Texas story tellers go, John is one of the best, and he’s got a way with words that charms his friends and bedevils his foes.

When he started law school in the mid 1970s, John was already a successful land man, researching and understanding all sorts of intricate legal aspects of land titles and the rights of each, particularly as they related to oil and gas interests.

When our class was graduating and taking jobs, just about everyone went into law, except John. He was making twice as much as anyone else in our class, doing land work and evaluating oil and gas interests.

JOHN CASTLETON reads business news like a bunch of ants eats a dead cricket. He devours news, and quickly makes it part of his ongoing analysis of where we are and where we are headed. If it has to do with oil and gas, he probably knows it.

Once in law school in a business corporations and partnerships class, the professor — who was extraordinarily arrogant and self satisfied, even for a law professor at the University of Texas — made a big blunder while talking about the major oil companies. In his usual certitude, the professor threw away this line: “Of course, all the major oil companies are owned strictly through corporate interests — stock holdings!”

The class of 160 students was as shocked as the professor, when John’s baritone voice bellowed “Are you sure about that?”

The professor’s jaw dropped, having not been called down like that by any student in memory, as did the jaws of most of the students.

Attempting to regain his composure and footing, but looking as if he was a lot less certain than before, the professor replied “well, I can’t imagine that they would in this day and age.”

JOHN REPLIED: “T. Mellon and Son, a family partnership, owns a portion of Gulf Oil, even though most of the Mellon family holdings are in stock. If you’ll consult Forbes magazine, they had an article last summer which mentioned it.”

No one in the law school ever looked at John the same way again after that day. He was “the guy who cut Professor Bighead off at the knees.”

John was up here to visit a while back, and we went to get some shrimp at a nearby restaurant that really makes delicious fried shrimp. Always ready to kid people, John very seriously asked the lady at the restaurant, in his best good old boy “do y’all really catch these shrimp rat cheer in this here lake?!”

John Castleton has the gift of gab, and with it he can make friends laugh and foes frown. Me, I’ve got that acre of knowledge an inch deep.

© 2009, Pappy Moore, All Rights Reserved.

Pappy Moore is a humorist, a native son of East Texas who still makes the piney woods his home.

oaktreefm58@hotmail.com Pappy Moore Archives