Diamond A Energy (fka DAECE)

[photonwav]

ART LINKLETTER invests in Oil and Gas Well Working Interests!


CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Interview with Art Linkletter
Aired July 26, 2002 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight -- Art Linkletter. He just turned 90. Can you believe it? He says it's better to be over the hill than under the hill. This straight-talking conservative tells us how he coped with the tragic deaths of two children, stayed married to the same woman for more than 60 years and went from being a hobo by choice to one of America's best-loved broadcasters ever. Art Linkletter for the hour next on LARRY KING LIVE.

Happy birthday.

ART LINKLETTER, JUST TURNED 90 YEARS OLD: Thank you.

KING: What's it like to be 90?

LINKLETTER: I prefer to call it the 40th anniversary of my 50th birthday.

KING: What is it like?

LINKLETTER: It feels...

KING: No one thinks they are going to be 90.

LINKLETTER: No, no, they don't feel -- I feel so much younger inside. Now I know from experience I can't do the things I used to do. For instance, now when I ski, I ski from 10:00 to 2:00, not from 9:00 to 5:00. But as far as sex is concerned, I can still talk about it for hours.

KING: When you were like 40, 50, did you think you'd be 90?

LINKLETTER: No. In the first place, I knew that the average child born when I was born in 1912 lived to be 47. That was the average age I could expect to be.

KING: So you've doubled your expectancy?

LINKLETTER: I have done more than doubled that, and I'm ready to start on my triple. Because after all, being over the hill is better than being under it.

KING: I know. But you didn't expect it?

LINKLETTER: No, no, I didn't think about it. When you are young, you don't think about dying. As a matter of fact, when you are young and really young, in your 20s, you don't think about anything bad happening to you, which is why so many kids get into drugs, get into trouble, and you can tell them over and over what's going to happen if their health and mental capacity is hurt. They don't really believe it. Nobody believes that.

KING: What do you get someone? What kind of presents do you get at 90, when you have got everything? I mean, you don't need a dollar. What do you get?

LINKLETTER: I got the darndest present this morning. At 6:00 o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by a telephone call from Texas, my oil drilling partner, Jeff Rand (ph), told me we hit a major gas field in southern Texas. Now, there is no better present than that, because a gas field is one that lasts 10, 15, 20 years. So for the next 15 or 20 years, I can go anywhere, do anything I want.

KING: Art, you don't need it, do you? So what is the kick of it?

LINKLETTER: The kick of it...

KING: Whether that came in or didn't come in don't change your life one iota.

LINKLETTER: No, but why am I in many businesses?

KING: Why?

LINKLETTER: I'm in real estate -- because it's growing, it's learning, it's taking...

KING: It's not the money.

LINKLETTER: Now, the oil and gas business is the only place I gamble. I can go to Vegas, not put a quarter in a machine or a dollar on anything, and I don't gamble, poker, anyplace. But I am fascinated by the combination in the oil business and gas business that you have science, you have experience, you have engineering, you have the market, but is it there? You can test it and show that it should be there. There's a reservoir there.

KING: And two geologists could disagree.

LINKLETTER: But at 18,000 feet, which is five miles deep, you don't know whether that place is gone, the oil has migrated.

KING: Is that called wild catting? What is that called?

LINKLETTER: Wild catting. Yes.

KING: That's real rolling dice, though.

LINKLETTER: And a real wild catter in Texas is the kind of a guy that would come to you and say, look, Art, I got a sure thing. We know it's there. Mortgage the farm. And he does the whole thing and you get a dry hole. And he says, Art, we got a dry hole. But we learned from that hole that if you just drilled 150 yards upstream, or uphill, you're going to get one. And they live and die by that. And it's fun, exciting.

KING: Back to 90. You don't feel 90?

LINKLETTER: No.

KING: OK.

LINKLETTER: No.

KING: Here's what Bill Cosby's office sent us from Mystic Sea concerning you. "Art claims he and his wife never fight. But a few times, things have gotten a bit heated. That's when Art says, if you don't stop what you're doing right now, I'm going to kill you. Since Art's wife is still alive and he's not in jail and the marriage is intact after more than 6 1/2 decades, his laying down the law is clearly the secret for his successful husband/wife relationship."

LINKLETTER: Well, that's kind of...........

then the interview proceeded.....

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0207/26/lkl.00.html