What I learned from reading Wildcatters: A Story of Texans, Oil, and Money by Sally Helgesen.
In 1978, Mani man Krief was 84 years old.
He was still very much the patriarch of his clan, the man who made the decisions in his family and in his family's business.
Family and business were, in fact, the same thing with him, the desire to found the one, being inseparably tied to the desire to found the other.
When speaking of his business, he never mentioned himself specifically.
He would always say, we signed this deal.
We figured out what was best.
This is a we kind of business, he explained.
We don't tolerate any of that I stuff around here in Texas.
In the oil business, one sees as nowhere else that the ideal of capitalism is the ideal of founding a family and conferring the right of inheritance upon it, passing a legacy on.
We're oilmen, Monty McCreef would answer when asked about ranching or about real estate or about anything else.
We're oil men meant that anything which extended beyond the realm of oil was not a proper Moncrieff concern.
We're 100% family owned, unincorporated and independent, and we intend to stay that way.
In the world of oil promoters, one sometimes meets with independents who have bought and sold their way through six or seven businesses, who indeed start those businesses with the aim of going public and selling out as soon as possible.
To Mani Moncrief, such a strategy is unimaginable.
Moncrief Oil is synonymous with himself, his dynasty.
Continuity is what his blood demands.
He was, at the age of 84, as big and as strong as a bull.
He possessed the directness and the utter simplicity of the old and truly great.
He walked without a stoop, and he carried his large frame without a trace of fat.
He seemed impervious to age or to changing times.