Conspiracy of Fools Read Online Free PDF Page B

replied. “We’re on it”
    Both men stood, and Lay escorted Woytek to the door. He felt confident that his message had been heard. He wasn’t going to stand by and be played for a fool. Besides, the trading unit had always struck him as a little wild and woolly; maybe this was the chance to get the place under some more watchful eyes. Lay liked that idea; he liked to see the possibilities, the upside. As anyone who knew Enron would say, Lay and his company had long ago learned that every challenge could be transformed into opportunity.
    ———
    The dilapidated black truck rumbled over the rural Missouri road, veering ever closer to the edge. In the flatbed, dozens of crated-up chickens squawked, scratched, and clucked as the truck headed out of a speck of a town called Raymondville. It was 1948, and Ken Lay’s father, Omer, was struggling for the second time to keep a general store afloat. Omer had taken to purchasing chickens from local farmers, selling them at a profit in nearby cities, and on this day he had gambled everything on a single shipment. But his driver had knocked back a few drinks and now was weaving all over the road. The weight of the truck shifted, until it flipped over in a terrible crunch of metal and wood. The driver survived, but most of the chickens were killed—right along with Omer’s business.
    The accident was a turning point for the struggling, deeply religious Lay family. With two daughters and Kenny, their six-year-old middle child, Omer and his wife, Ruth, had hoped the store might allow them to settle down, maybe own their own place. Now those dreams were gone.
    Omer took a job in Mississippi selling stoves door-to-door, bouncing his family around the state but never seeing enough success to make ends meet. The family hit bottom one Thanksgiving when Ruth—the spark plug of the household who delighted in nothing more than whipping up family feasts—could only afford to serve luncheon meat. Admitting defeat, the Lays moved to a Missouri farm with some of Ruth’s family until Omer could get back on his feet. Soon he found work in sales and a spot preaching at a church.
    Around that time, young Kenny—he was usually “Kenny” as a child, never “Ken” and rarely “Kenneth”—scouted up some jobs for before and after school so that he could help the family. He delivered newspapers, mowed grass, baled hay, anything he could find. Between Omer and Kenny, money was coming in, and the Lays were able to settle in a home just off a dirt road cutting through Rush Hill.
    Within a few years the financial troubles returned. Lay’s older sister, Bonnie, headed to college, and the cost was far more than the family had anticipated. The only way the family could scrape together the money for college, they decided, was for the kids to live at home. So the Lays moved again, this time some fifty miles southwest to Columbia, the college town for the University of Missouri.
    Lay’s big moment in college came in his sophomore year, when he signed up for introductory economics, taught by a popular professor, Pinkney Walker. Lay found himself mesmerized by Walker’s lectures laying out free-market theories;
this
, he decided, was what he wanted to study. Walker was impressed with the smart young man and became a mentor for young Lay.With Walker’s encouragement, Lay stayed on at school after his senior year to obtain his master’s degree. But that was enough for Lay; he was eager to get out and start earning some money.
    He took a job with Houston-based Humble Oil & Refining, later part of Exxon, helping set up the company’s corporate-development department for what seemed a princely salary of thirteen thousand dollars a year. With his career blooming, Lay felt ready to settle down, and in June 1966 he married his college sweetheart, Judith Ayers.
    Lay took to the job, enthralled as he debated topics like the future growth rate of the American economy. But soon a new opportunity emerged. His