I Seem to Remember

I seem to remember reading in National Geographic some time ago that the reason the Saudis like us is that US oil companies helped them develop their oil fields back in the 1920s or 30s. The first King Saud managed to organize a bunch of feuding sheiks into something resembling a nation state after the Turks were defeated in World War I. In those days, the only resources in that country were camels and oil, and the Saudis didn't know what to do with the oil. As late as the 1960s, Americans were still running the show but, at some point, the Saudis must have taken over, because they were able to shut off the flow for awhile in the 70s. I also seem to remember that it was the Saudis who persuaded all the other OPEC members to turn the flow back on again because camels don't run on oil.

When I first came to Cheboygan, back in 1967, I met a guy whose parents had spent a year in Saudi Arabia pumping oil and making tons of money. The kid was still in high school at the time, but he had always been a responsible kid, so his parents left him in charge of the house while they were gone. They told him he could have a few friends over from time to time but, when the word got out that there was this big beautiful house on the river with no adults in it, everybody gathered there on the weekends to party. They promised the kid that they would all pitch in and clean the place up before his parents came home. Well, they didn't, and the kid's parents were still not speaking to him when I met him a few years later. That's how I know there were still Americans pumping oil in Saudi Arabia in the 60s.

I think that Old Dog's reference to "religious differences" in the "Muslim community" is an understatement. Everything I've read or heard about those people indicates that they hate each other's guts. It all goes back to about the sixth century AD when they had a big argument about who should replace their prophet Mohammed after he died. You wouldn't think something like that would motivate people to massacre each other even unto this day, so there must be more to it than that, but that's how it started.

I never thought of St. Louis as being a particularly dangerous city, but I suppose if you factor in the floods and tornadoes with the crime and rioting, it could possibly be.