Which Reminds Me

My mother owns mineral rights to land in Texas which she inherited from my grandfather who farmed there at some time in the 1920s. These rights are leased to a gas and oil consultant and these rights grant him access to the land to conduct various tests of a geological nature. In return for this concession, the gas and oil consultant pays my mother a small fee which reserves for him the rights to negotiate for future oil well drilling and reserve a small commission for himself on the proceeds should there ever be an oil well drilled at some future time. Years ago someone said that the farmer had expressed concern about not being able to legally deny access to his farmland to the testers. The testers apparently are a disturbance to the farming activities necessary to sending food to market in a timely manner, or so the issue was represented at one time. However, this controversy proves only that the farmer is perhaps a somewhat peevish fellow forgetful of the fact that every homeowner has a water meter in the backyard and a water meter man who comes to read the water meter. Access is automatically granted because the water belongs to the city. Unless he wants to pay for the building of his own water well, the homeowner has to pay for his own water. More recently my mother explained that my grandfather had sold a portion of the mineral rights to the farmer so that he also would get a commission on oil drilling on that portion of the farm land to which he owns mineral rights. Apparently the access issue was part of the discussion and I had only heard part of that. Anyway, the farmer ought to know that if someone is breaking into his house and rifling through the books on his bookshelf that would not be us. It could be those spies from Pemex but it would not be us. Anyway, this land is in Texas which the last I heard is part of the United States not belonging or owing any allegiance to Spain or Mexico that I know of. Perhaps those Mexicans would like to claim us for Pemex, which is the state-controlled oil company of Mexico. However, they will perhaps be sorely disappointed to learn that we are not interested in merging our gas and oil concerns with those of Mexico. Unlike Mexico, a country of group mentalities, we in the U.S. have so far left gas and oil well drilling to private industry. Any discussion of oil well drilling would have to be addressed to the oil and gas people who keep track of these matters. Oil well drilling in Texas is at a standstill currently due to various environmental concerns and bureaucratic red tape they tell me. I really haven't studied that very much. I don't know. Perhaps the people of Texas are opposed to oil well drilling, the Hobby Lobby having determined to deny me any benefit of existence on this planet. And yet the government of Texas does not belong to the haughtily arrogant Heather and her greedy rich Hobby Lobby cousins. The Equal Rights Amendment is a two-edged sword in some respects, and yet what can one poor person such as myself do against all of these fat cat rich people arrayed against me, prepared to gun down my smallest move? Nothing, obviously. There is absolutely nothing that I can do. I am as good as dead, basically.