P: Now, you met him on Saturday, the day after you arrived.

M: Yes, and I spent all day with him. He took me to the airport late that
 afternoon, and I went back to Los Angeles.

P: What did he want to know about you?

M: He wanted to know if I knew how to construct a budget. (The company
 never had a budget.) I told him yes.

P: That was right down your alley.

M: That is right. He wanted to know if I was worried because they were going
 to have to borrow $2.5 billion in the next five years. I did not have enough
 sense to be worried about that.

P: Million or billion?

M: Billion.

P: That is just a lot of zeros.

M: That is right. He told me about the problems with the environmentalists and
 all, and I did not have enough sense to be worried about that.

P: You may never have heard of Marjory Stoneman Douglas [Florida
 environmental activist] at that point.

M: That is right; I had not. He wanted to know what I knew about utility
 accounting, and, from the little practice that I had had in Houston, I told him
 I knew something about it--without specifying that I had always represented
 the people fighting the utilities. I think that, basically, he wanted to know
 how I reacted; because he was a professional country boy, and he did not
 want any city slicker. I suspect that the fact that I had come from Florida
 and had gone to the University of Florida was an important point, although
 he never mentioned that. But I could talk just as country as he could. I
 also knew a lot of people in the state.

P: So that carried a lot of weight with Mr. Smith.

M: I think so.

P: He did not pursue the harmonica thing anymore?

M: At that point he did not. [laughter]


 47