From California’s bea to the Permian Basin


BY STEVE BRAWNER Contributing Writer


To an outsider, Dave Musgraves may not have been the obvious choice to be plucked


from the E.L. Farmer organization to lead day-to-day operations as vice president. In fact, technically, he wasn’t even part of the organization. Instead, he owned an agency working with the company. But E.L. Farmer’s president, Jimmy Todd, saw some qualities in Musgraves that he


knew would make him a good fit: honesty, knowledge, experience in the oilfield business, and, not inconsequentially, youth. The company’s previous longtime leader, J.C. Ferguson, had run it for decades until shortly before his death in 1997 in his early 90s. Everyone he had hired in senior management positions had retired or was close to retirement age. “I asked some of the people with Farmer who was the most likely in the organization


could act as manager,” he said. “Without fail, they all said, ‘Well, Dave Musgraves is prob- ably the guy in the company best qualified to run it.’ And Dave was a good friend, and somebody that was completely trustworthy.” Musgraves’ path to Odessa was even more unlikely than his path to company leader-


ship. He grew up in Ventura, California, where he spent his spare time surfing and fish- ing. He married his high school sweetheart, Kristi, after meeting her at Ojai Valley Baptist Church. As an adult, Musgraves worked a variety of short-term jobs: insulating houses, at a gas station, in fast food. For a time, he worked at a plant in Santa Barbara that made lenses for Panavision cameras and the Hubble Telescope. He worked in the back room polishing lenses. Then in 1981 his father-in-law, Emmett “Bo” Thompson, called asking if he wanted


to come to Hobbs, New Mexico, to drive a truck for a hot shot agency he was starting that would make on-demand deliveries for the oilfield industry. Musgraves said he was proba- bly the third choice after Thompson’s two sons, who had declined their father’s offer, but that didn’t stop him. “I didn’t have a whole lot to lose, so I said why not?” he said. Thus was born B&D Services, Inc., the “B” for “Bo” and the “D” for “Dave.” Moving to Hobbs wasn’t a problem for Kristi, who was born there and had spent


much of her childhood there. For Musgraves, it would be a major change from the beach life he had always known. It did not start out well. The couple loaded up a motor home so full they couldn’t


sleep in it, so they stopped at a hotel in Tuscon. There, someone broke into the motor home and stole much of what they owned. It didn’t get better as they drew nearer to their


Continues


22


Issue 3, Fall 2016


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