Texas

by James A. Michener

  Moving farther along to where he thought the armadillos nested, he cut down two more panels, and then the fence-busters, who would have been shot for such action eighty years earlier, returned to the porch, where they sat with flashlights, and when the moon was up, Ransom cried with sheer delight: ‘Here they come!’

  By morning the armored destroyers would have that green looking as if it had been run over by careless bulldozers, and Ransom Rusk, $22,000,000 poorer, plus $238,000 for the fence, was happier than he had been in a long time.

  • • •

  As soon as Todd Morrison started digging into Houston he liked what he found. ‘This town has room for a stepper,’ he told his wife, ‘and I think I can step.’ With the funds provided by the men in Detroit, he began looking around for likely spots at which to locate his franchises, and he became excited about the possibilities.

  ‘This place is incredible!’ he told the family one night. ‘A population this large and absolutely no zoning. A man can build anything he pleases, and no one can say him nay.’ He pointed out that this remarkable freedom did not result in a hodgepodge: ‘Some kind of rational good sense seems to prevail. Builders don’t go wild. They just do what they damned well please, but they sort of hold things together.’

  As with many operations in a democracy, cost seemed to enforce common sense, for no builder would erect his monumental new set of condominiums next to some hovel. What he did was buy up four hundred shacks, level them, and on this cleared land erect his Taj Mahal. Some other builder would do the same half a mile away, erect his Taj Mahal. Some other builder would place his huge Shangri-La half a mile away, and then, out of self-respect, all the property in between would be subtly cleaned up. Houston was not a city; it was an agglomeration of stunningly beautiful spots connected by strips that would be beautiful later on. ‘Zoning on the measles principle,’ Todd called it. ‘A red splotch here, one over there, and finally, all bound together in interrelated patterns.’ Houston was the last bastion of free, private enterprise, laissez faire at its best, and Todd relished it.

  As he worked he found that a good many of the locations he preferred were controlled by a hard-working real estate agent named Gabe Klinowitz, sixty-three years old and hardened in the Houston way of doing things. He was a small, round man, smoked a cigar and wore conservative business suits when the rest of Houston preferred less formal dress. And he was bright, as the success of his firm proved.

  During his first meeting with Todd he revealed one of his guiding principles: ‘I look for the bright young man just entering the field. Help him get started right. Then expect to do profitable business with him for the next thirty years.’

  When Todd said he’d appreciate guidance, Gabe suggested: ‘What you must do is master the wraparound.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  Taking a piece of paper, Klinowitz showed Todd the secret of buying real estate for a large corporation like a gasoline company: ‘You find a good spot, on the corner of two busy roads. The owner has two acres, won’t break it up into smaller lots. The company, say Mobil or Humble in the old days, they can use a quarter of an acre, only. That leaves you with an acre and three-quarters wrapping around the corner in a kind of capital L. Your job as buyer is to buy the entire piece, but not before you’ve found someone like me who’ll take the wraparound off your hands. Do you see the economics?’

  When Todd said that he did not, Klinowitz asked him to write down the figures: ‘You personally buy the whole two acres from the farmer for sixty thousand dollars. You’ve already arranged to sell the choice corner to Mobil for seventy-five thousand. And you sell me the wraparound, all that good land next to the corner, for fifty thousand. Your profit on the deal, a cool sixty-five thousand dollars.’

  Morrison studied this for a while, then pointed to the flaw: ‘But I’m buying this for the company, not for myself,’ and Klinowitz said: ‘Before long, I suspect you’ll be buying it for yourself.’

  The more Todd worked with Klinowitz, the more he liked him. The man was forthright, quick and impeccably honest. He was constantly making sharp deals, but he insisted that all participants understand the intricacies, and he would go to great lengths to explain to a farmer whose land he was trying to buy what the good and bad points of the proposed deal were. Often Todd heard him say: ‘You wait eight, ten years, undoubtedly you’ll get a better buy. But why wait? I promise you, you’ll not get a better deal right now than I’m offering.’

  From watching many sales, Morrison learned one secret of Gabe’s remarkable success in Houston real estate: ‘Todd, you must go to bed each night reassuring yourself: “This is going to go on forever.” I think it is. Houston is going to grow and grow and grow. You told me the other day that compared to Detroit prices, these are outrageous. Todd, I give you my solemn word, the two acres you buy today for sixty thousand, you’ll live to see them resell for six hundred thousand. You must tell yourself that every night, and you must believe. This can go on forever.’

  Once when he gave this sermon he grabbed Todd by the arm: ‘So you warn me: “Gabe, the bottom can fall out of this dream,” and I’m the first to confess: “Yes, it can. But only temporary. Two, three bad years, then we come zooming back.” Todd, this really can go on forever.’

  Having confessed that the bottom might drop out, temporarily, he gave Todd his first piece of long-range advice: ‘Always keep yourself in position to weather a few bad years. Fire three-fourths of your staff. Put your wife and kids on a severe allowance. Draw in your horns. Bring the wagons into a circle. But never lose faith. Houston real estate will always bounce back.’

  And then he reached the operative part of his counsel: ‘Do you see the logical consequences of this situation? If real estate is bound to zoom, it does not really matter how much you pay for a good site today. If you think the corner is worth no more than forty thousand and the farmer wants sixty thousand, give him the sixty, but he must allow you to write the terms.’

  ‘What terms?’

  ‘Smallest possible down payment, longest possible payout, lowest possible interest.’ And he shared with Todd the details of one of his latest deals: ‘This big corner, prime shopping area in the future, worth, I’d say, a hundred thousand dollars. Farmer thought he’d make a killing and ask a hundred and twenty-five thousand. Without blinking an eye I agreed, but then I insisted on an eleven-year payout, and a six-and-a-half-percent interest. He was glad to sign.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘Don’t you see? Suppose I was able to buy it at my price, but had to pay eight-percent interest for eleven years. Total interest, eighty-eight thousand dollars. If I pay his price with interest at six and a half percent, my interest bill for eleven years is eighty-nine thousand three hundred and seventy-five, only about a thousand dollars higher. Add that to the extra twenty-five thousand he chiseled me out of, I spent only twenty-six thousand extra dollars to make him very, very happy. He can boast to all his friends: “I certainly handled that sharp Jew real estate fellow.” ’

  ‘But it still cost you twenty-six thousand extra bucks.’

  ‘Todd, you miss the whole point! If Houston real estate is going to climb like I think, eleven years from now that corner will bring me not the hundred and twenty-five thousand I paid, but more than a million. You give a little today, you make a million tomorrow.’

  And when Todd still deemed it imprudent to pay more now than one had to, Gabe revealed his last principle: ‘Always leave a little something on the table for the other guy. Six years from now, when the rest of that man’s property is for sale, he’ll come to me because he’ll remember that I treated him square in 1969. I left a little on the table.’

  It was strange, but perhaps inevitable, that of all the advice Gabe Klinowitz shared with his new friend, the one thing that Todd remembered longest was a chance remark: ‘You may be buying for the company now, but before long you’ll be buying for yourself.’ And the more he contemplated this prediction the more sensible
it became. One night he told his wife: ‘With a little cash and a lot of gumption, a man could make a killing in this market.’

  He began riding tirelessly about the highways and country roads, looking not for franchise sites, because he had that end of his business rather well in hand, thanks to leads provided by Klinowitz, but for any stray properties which he might one day purchase for himself, and as he rode he found himself drawn northward, almost as if by magnet, to a peculiarity of the Texas scene: FM-1960.

  Up to about 1950, Texas had been predominantly an agricultural state, with its laws, banking procedures and business habits attuned to the rancher and the farmer. Not even oil had exceeded in general and financial interest the importance of the land, and a generation of Texas politicians had invented and supported a creative idea of high quality, the farm-to-market road, which ignored the through highways in favor of the small rural roads that wound here and there, enabling the farmer to bring the produce of his fields to the marketplace in the big towns. Forget the fact that if the quiet farm-to-market road was not well planned, it quite promptly became a jammed thoroughfare; the end result of this commendable system was a network of rural roads equaled in few states.

  So far to the north of central Houston that it seemed construction could never reach it, a modest farm-to-market had been established in the 1950s, called FM-1960. It was a narrow, bumpy road, well suited to a farmer’s slow-moving trucks, but Morrison could see that with a little impetus from a growing population, it had a strong chance of becoming a major thoroughfare. He was so enthusiastic about its possibilities that he took options on two corners, well separated, believing that automobiles must soon be careening past, but when one of the owners of Engine Experts flew down from Detroit, the man decided instantly that these two corners were too far out to be of any use to his company, and Todd was ordered to unload.

  ‘We have eight thousand dollars tied up in option money,’ he protested, and the man said: ‘That’s why you pay out option money, so you gain time to correct mistakes.’ In no way did he rebuke Todd, for he appreciated what a good job the latter had done in Houston, but long after he had flown back to Detroit, his decision rankled, and it was what happened as a consequence that launched Morrison on his unexpected career.

  Without telling Klinowitz that he had been forced to unload the options, he went to him and said: ‘I think I’d better stay closer to town. The kind of market I’m in. I have eight thousand tied up in these two options on FM-1960. Must I lose the down payments, or is there some way I could unload?’

  When Klinowitz saw the excellent sites he said immediately: ‘I’ll give you twelve thousand for your options right now. They’re choice.’

  ‘Why give twelve when you know I’d be glad to get back my eight?’ Todd asked, and Gabe said: ‘Always leave a little something on the table.’

  Now Morrison faced a grave moral problem: Should he inform the Detroit men of the $4,000 profit he had made on the deal, or should he pocket the windfall? He consulted with no one, not Gabe, not his wife, and certainly not the big men in Detroit, but he did argue with himself: First, I was acting as their agent. Second, they laughed at the deal. Third, what are the chances they’ll find out? In the end he decided to keep the money, and that, along with the $3,000 bonus he received at Christmas, plus the money his wife was earning as receptionist in another big real estate firm, enabled him to enter the new year with a nest egg of more than $11,000 and some tantalizing ideas.

  In January, as he was exploring further possibilities along FM-1960, he came upon a wedge of farmland owned by an elderly Mr. Hooker, and while Todd was more or less jousting with him over the possibility of buying a corner lot, a white Ford pickup screeched onto the gravel and came to a dusty stop. Apparently the driver was in the oil business, for big letters along the side proclaimed ROY BUB HOOKER, DRILLING. From the cab, which had a two-gun rack behind the driver’s head, stepped a big, jovial twenty-four-year-old wearing overalls, cheap cowboy boots and a checkered bandanna. He was your typical Texas redneck, of that there could be no doubt, but when he spoke, it was obvious that he had received a good education. It came not from his teachers, for he had despised school, but from his mother, who had taught him both a proper vocabulary and acceptable manners, neither of which he felt much inclination to use.

  As soon as he stepped up to Morrison and stuck out his hand, grunting: ‘Hi, I’m Roy Bub Hooker, his son,’ it was obvious that details of any sale would be in Roy Bub’s hands, and during one of the early meetings he explained: ‘My older sister couldn’t say brother, so she stuck me with Bubba, and it became Roy Bub.’

  He was so shrewd a bargainer, quoting what prices corner lots had brought along FM-1960, that Todd had to warn him: ‘Hey, look, Roy Bub, two things. I’m not a millionaire and I’m not even sure I want to buy,’ and Roy Bub snapped back: ‘Who said my old man wanted to sell?’

  Since he was almost offensive in the brusque manner in which he dismissed Morrison, Todd felt he must strike back to maintain balance in the bargaining: ‘They warned me I could never do business with a redneck.’

  ‘Hey, wait!’ Roy Bub cried as if he were sorely wounded. ‘I’m no redneck. I’m a good ol’ boy.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Hey! A redneck drives a Ford pickup. He has a gun rack behind his ears. He has funny little signs painted on his tailgate. He drives down the highway drinking Lone Star out of a can, which he tosses into the middle of the road.’

  ‘I don’t see the difference. You have a Ford. You have that gun rack. Look at the signs on your tailgate.’ And there they were, revealing the emotional confusions that activated Roy Bub and his compadres:

  HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS

  THE WEST WASN’T WON WITH A REGISTERED GUN

  NATIVE BORN TEXAN AND PROUD OF IT

  SECESSION NOW

  SURE I’M DRUNK—

  YOU THINK I DRIVE THIS WAY ALL THE TIME?

  And off to one side, a little dustier than the others:

  IMPEACH EARL WARREN

  ‘And,’ Todd added, ‘I see you have one of those holders for your Lone Star. So what’s the difference?’

  ‘Old buddy!’ Roy Bub cried. ‘A redneck throws his empties in the middle of the road. A good ol’ boy tosses his’n in the ditch.’

  No sale could be agreed upon at this time, and the uncertainty gave Morrison sleepless nights in the darkness as he lay beside Maggie, exhausted after her long hours of work and housekeeping; he could never discern whether she liked Houston or not, but she certainly worked at making a good home from whatever Houston provided, and this he appreciated.

  His nervousness sprang from real causes. The Hooker corner could be bought, he felt sure, for $71,000, two and three-quarter acres at a location any expert would classify as superb. He would have to make the deal on his own, because he already knew that Engine Experts would not be interested, but if he could locate a big gasoline company that wanted a prime spot for a filling station, one that would dominate the market, he might sell off the corner for $60,000, leaving him with two and a half acres for a cost of only $11,000, which would exhaust his savings.

  However, if he could sell off even a small portion of his wraparound, he could discharge his debt and have two acres or even more scot-free. Then, if he was energetic, he could sell off more segments of the wraparound and come out a big winner. Also, if he could interest Gabe in some of the land he acquired in this way, he could have his profit in hand before July. And then he could take that profit …

  During the entire month of January he slept only fitfully, for the temptations of the deal were so alluring that he spent the first half of each night calculating his possible winnings and the second half staring in the darkness at the possible catastrophes. In early February he took his wife, but not his children, into his confidence: ‘Maggie, I face the chance of a lifetime. This young fellow Roy Bub Hooker has power of attorney to sell a corner lot on FM-1960. We could swing it if, and I repeat i
f, we could find an oil company to take the corner bit off our hands. We’d wind up with two and a half choice acres practically free, and then if, and again I repeat if …’

  ‘Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘You know what Houston real estate is doing. I don’t have to prove anything.’

  ‘I know what it’s doing for others. Who have the land or the money. I’m not so sure what it could do for us.’

  ‘Would you be willing for us to take the risk? All our savings?’ She said a curious thing: ‘You’d have to tell Detroit, of course.’ ‘Why?’

  ‘Dealing in property on the side. The temptation would always be to give them the poor deal, keep the good one for yourself.’

  ‘I don’t see why they’d have to know anything.’

  ‘I do. Business ethics. The sanctity of the arm’s-length deal.’

  ‘Now what do you mean by that?’

  ‘It’s something they drummed into me when I got my license. An honest deal involves two people who shake hands across a carefully protected distance. No internal hanky-panky. No secret brother-in-law shakedown.’ Something in the recent behavior of her fast-moving husband caused her to warn: ‘Todd, any deal you engage in must be at arm’s length.’

  On Sunday she rode out to FM-1960, and as soon as she saw the corner, she wanted to buy it, and after they had supper with Roy Bub, she liked him even more than she had his land: ‘You’re an original, Roy Bub, don’t ever change.’

  ‘Minute we sell that land, I’m gettin’ me a Cadillac.’

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ she said, and he confided: ‘I’ll tell you this, your husband buys that corner, I’m gettin’ me a first-class stereo for my truck.’

  She shuddered: ‘The new Texas. Roy Bub roaring down the highway at ninety with his stereo full blast. Won’t even hear the siren when the cops chase him,’ and he said: ‘Ma’am, that’s exactly what I have in mind.’