maintain his personal network. Out of all this ingratiating Babbitry and boosterism would come
acquaintances and the bits of information that could lead to windfall profits.
There had been a boom in Scurry County, but that was subsiding. Bush drove to Pyote, to Snyder,
to Sterling City, to Monahans, with Rattlesnake Air Force Base just outside of town. How many
Texas ranchers can remember selling their mineral rights for a pittance to smiling George Bush, and
then having oil discovered on the land, oil from which their family would never earn a penny?
Across the street from Bush-Overbey were the offices of Liedtke & Liedtke, Attorneys at law. J.
Hugh Liedtke and William Liedtke were from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they, like Bush, had grown
up rich as the sons of a local judge who had become one of the top corporate lawyers for Gulf Oil.
The Liedtke's grandfather had come from Prussia, but had served in the Confederate Army. J. HughLiedtke had found time along the way to acquire the notorious Harvard Master of Business
Administration degree in one year. After service in the navy during the war, the Liedtkes obtained
law degrees of the University of Texas law school, where they rented the servant's quarters of the
home of US Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who was away in Washington most of the time. During
those years, Johnson's home was occupied most of the time by his protege, John Connally.
The Liedtkes combined the raw, uncouth primitive accumulation mentality of the oil boom town
with the refined arts of usury and speculation as Harvard taught them. Their law practice was a law
practice in name only; their primary and almost exclusive activity was buying up royalty leases on
behalf of a money bags in Tulsa who was a friend of their family; the Liedtkes got a 5%commission on every deal they handled.
Hugh Liedtke was always on the lookout for the Main Chance. Following in the footsteps of his
fellow Tulsan Ray Kravis, Hugh Liedtke schemed and schemed until he had found a way to go
beyond hussuch a way as to permit the eventual owner to defer all tax liabilities until the field was depleted.tling for royalty leases: he concocted a method of trading oil-producing properties in (^)
Sometimes Hugh Liedtke would commute between Midland and Tulsa on an almost daily basis. He
would spend the daylight hours prowling the Permian Basin for a land deal, make the thirteen hour
drive to Tulsa overnight to convince his backers to ante up the cash, and then race back to Midland
to close the deal before the sucker got away. It was during this phase that it occurred to Liedtke thathe could save himself a lot of marathon commuter driving if he could put together a million dollars
in venture capital and "inventory" the deals he was otherwise forced to make a piecemeal and ad
hoc basis. [fn 10]
The Liedtke brothers now wanted to go beyond royalarge-scale drilling for and production of oil. George Bush, by nowlty leases and land sale tax dodge well versed in the alphas ands, and begin
omegas of oil as ground rent, was thinking along the same lines. In a convergence that was full of
ominous portent for the US economy of the 1980's, the Liedtke brothers and George Bush decided
to pool their capital and their rapacious talents by going into business together. Overbey was on
board initially, but would soon fall away.
The year was 1953, and Uncle Herbie's G.H. Walker & Co. became the principal underwriter of the
stock and convertible debentures that were to be offered to the public. Uncle Herbie would also
purchase a large portion of the stock himself. When the new company required further infusions of
capital, Uncle Herbie would float the necessary bondsand would find a seat on the board of directors of the new company. Another of the key investors. Jimmy Gammell remained a key participant
was the Clark Family Estate, meaning the trustees who managed the Singer Sewing machine
fortune. [fn 11] Some other money came from various pension funds and endowments, sources that
would become very popular during the leveraged buyout orgy Bush presided over during the 1980's.
Of the capital of the new Bush-Liedtke concern, about $500,000 would come from Tulsa cronies of