by Texas
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 j rack. Look at the signs on your tailgate.' And there they were, J 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 youi 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 cornei could be bought, he felt sure, for $71,000, two and three-quartei
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 1 repeat if, 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.'
So on the fourth of February she gave permission for the deal, if Todd thought he could swing it, and on the fifth, adhering to Gabe's strategy, he agreed to Roy Bub's price if he could dictate the terms: 'Nine thousand cash on signing, so's you can get that stereo. Eleven-year payout. Six-percent interest.' Roy Bub, who had studied so hard to determine the fair price for his land, had paid no attention to the going rates of interest and did not realize that he might have got seven and a half percent on the unpaid balance.
But now the sweating in the rented house in Quitman Street really began, for when Todd inquired casually among the men who bought land for the big oil companies, he found they were not eager to locate their filling stations so far north of the city, and although he praised FM-1960 rather fulsomely, they tended to say: 'Sure it's good, but we can wait till traffic picks up, if it does.'
He went through March, April and May without a nibble, and one night as he tossed sleeplessly he faced the fact that come next January, only seven months away, he would be required to pay Roy Bub the first installment of interest plus a reduction of the balance, and he could not imagine where he could find that kind of money. Nor had he located anyone interested in his remainder of the wraparound. The future seemed extremely bleak, and he joined that endless procession of Texan gamblers who had risked mightily on the chance of winning big. Mattie Quimper had tried to claim both banks of the river in the 1820s, and Floyd Rusk had pulled his own tricks a hundred years later when trying to sew up the Larkin Field. It was the Texas game, and all who played it to the hilt sweated in the dark night hours, but like Todd Morrison in 1969, they gritted their teeth: 'Something will
turn up.'
His savior, as he might have anticipated, was Gabe Klinowitz: 'Todd, I believe you're on the pointy end of a long stick.'
'I am. But I put myself there.'
'Have you told the people in Detroit what you're doing?'
'No.'
'You should. Fiduciary responsibility. When lawyers forget about this, they go to jail. You forget, you could be fired.' He spoke from the widest possible experience in oil, insurance, real estate and the legal profession; men who cut too many corners ran the risk of jail.
'I'll tell them when I get it sorted out.'
'I hope that won't be too late.' He changed his tone: 'I've heard that an independent is looking for a choice site on FM-1960.'
independents pay bottom dollar, don't they?'
'But they pay.' When Todd said nothing, Gabe said: 'Always remember the advice J. P. Morgan gave a young assistant. Young fellow said: "Mr. Morgan, how much should a man my age buy on margin?" and Morgan said: "That depends." And the young fellow said: "I've borrowed so much I can hardly sleep at night," and Morgan said: "Simple. Sell to the sleeping point."
'Meaning?'
'Your prime responsibility, Todd, is to get some cash back in your hand. If I offered you forty thousand dollars today, grab it. Pay off your obligations. Make a little less on the deal, but remain in condition to hold on to the rest of your wraparound.'
'Could you get me forty thousand?'
i'm sure I can do better. Fifty-one thousand, maybe as much as fifty-three.'
'My God! That would get me off the hook.' He grasped Gabe's hand, then asked: 'But why would you do this for me? You know you could take it off my hands at whatever price you set, and make yourself a bundle.'
'Todd, I have sixteen deals cooking. I think you're going to be in this business for the rest of my life. In years to come we'll arrange a hundred deals. I can wait for my big profits. You need your fragile profits right now.' They shook hands formally, and Todd said: 'A man like you is worth a million.'
And then, just as Todd was about to sign the papers Gabe had sent him, Gulf Oil decided that after all, it would experiment with an FM-1960 location, and they heard that Todd had the inside track on a fine corner. With his knees shaking, Todd told them. i think I could put you on the inside track for seventy-one thousand dollars.' The Gulf representative, eager to close a deal once the decision had been made by his head office, agreed, and the sale was closed, with Todd and the Gulf man shaking hands.
Elated but nervous, Todd now had to inform Klinowitz that the deal with the independent had to be canceled, even though a
gentlemen's agreement had been reached: 'Nothing was signed, you know, Gabe, and Gulf was so hungry to get that land, they demanded an answer right away. I tried to call you, but you were out.' And although each man knew that a handshake had sanctified the sale to the independent, Gabe merely said: 'I'll find them something, but, Todd, I hope you inform Detroit that you've been dealing on your own. There are rules to this game, you know,' and Todd said: 'Absolutely!' but the letter he had drafted in his head, aware that it ought to be sent, was never written.
The Morrisons as a family ran into their first serious Texas decision when daughter Beth entered Miss Barlow's junior-high class in Texas history. Each child in the Texas system studied state history at two different levels, first as legend when young, then as simplified glorification at Beth's age. The scholarly could also take it as an elective in high school and as an optional course in college. The goal of this intense concentration was, as one curriculum stated, 'to make children aware of their glorious heritage and to ensure that they become loyal Texas citizens.'
Few teachers, at any of the four levels, taught with the single-minded ferocity exhibited daily by Flora Barlow. She was in her sixties, a cultured, quiet woman whose ancestors had played major roles in the periods she talked about, and while she was not family-proud, as some teachers of her subject tended to be, she was inwardly gratified that her family had helped to shape what she was convinced was the finest single political entity in the world, the semi-nation of Texas.
Standing before a massive map of Texas that showed all the counties in outline only, she said softly: 'Your Texas has two hundred and fifty-four counties, many times more than less fortunate states, and one day when I was just starting to teach, a young fellow teacher, educated in the North, looked at our map with its scatter of counties and said, rather boldly I thought: "Looks as if Texas had freckles." '
When her children laughed, she said: it would be quite silly of me, wouldn't it, if I required you to memorize the names of all the counties?' When the children groaned, she said solemnly: 'But I can name them. With their county seats.'
She called to the front of the room one of her pupils, and it chanced to be Beth Morrison: 'Here is the pointer, Beth. Point as you will at any county on that map, and I shall give you its name and the name of its county seat.'
Stabbing blindly at the center of the map, Beth's pointer struck
a large, oddly shaped county: 'That's Comanche County, named after our raiding Indians; county seat, Comanche.'
When Beth tried the northeast corner, Miss Barlow said promptly: 'You've chosen Upshur County, named after a United States Secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur; county seat, Gilmer.'
Now Beth indicated one of the many squared-off western counties, a score of them almost identical in size and shape, but without hesitation Miss Barlow said: 'You're on Hale County, named for our great hero Lieutenant J. C. Hale, who died gallantly defeating General Santa Anna at San Jacinto; county seat, the important city of Plainview. If you're going to live and prosper in Texas, it's prudent to know where things are.'
When Beth reported this amazing performance to her parents, they at first laughed, for they had undergone an amusing embarrassment over one of the Texas counties, Bexar, which contained the attractive city of San Antonio. 'It's spelled B-e-x-a-r,' Mrs. Morrison said, 'and for the longest time your father and I pronounced it Bex-ar, the way any sensible person would. But then we kept hearing on the radio when we drove to work "Bare County this and Bare County that," and one day we asked: "Where is this Bare County?" and the old-timers laughed: "That's how we say Bexar." So now your father and I know where Bare County is.'
But as the family studied this matter—Beth in school, her parents in their daily life—they discovered that Miss Barlow was not being arbitrary in insisting that her pupils know something about the multiple counties of Texas, because unlike any other state, Texas wrote its history in relationship to its counties. This was partly because the state was so enormous that it had to be broken down into manageable regions, but more because the towns within the regions were often so small and relatively unimportant that few people could locate them. A man or a family did not come from some trivial county seat containing only sixty persons; that man or family came from an entire county, and once the name of that county was voiced, every knowing listener knew what kind of man he was.
The statement 'We moved from Tyler County to Polk' told the entire story of a farmer who had sought better land to the west. 'My grandfather raised cotton in Cherokee County, but when the crop failed three times running, he tried cattle in Palo Pinto.' That summarized three decades of Texas agricultural history.
One either knew the basic counties or remained ignorant of Texas history, and Miss Barlow did not intend that any of her students should have such a handicap. To help them master the
outlines, she had devised an imaginative exercise, and it was in the execution of this that Beth, and indeed the entire Morrison family, fell afoul of the Deaf Smith school system: 'My former students have found it helpful to identify five counties. Choose any five you wish, but they must be in five widely separated parts of the state. After you select your counties, memorize them and their county seats. Then you will always have a kind of framework onto which you can attach the other counties in that district.'
Most of the students, eager to -escape extra work, chose
easy picks whose important county seat bore the same name as the county, such as Dallas in the north, El Paso in the far west, Lubbock in the west, and Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico. Boys usually picked popular names like Deaf Smith along the New Mexico border, Maverick on the Rio Grande, or Red River on the boundary stream of that name. And of course, there were always some smart alecks who chose 'Floyd County; county seat, Floydada' or 'Bee County; county seat, Beeville.' Miss Barlow indulged such choices because she had learned that any student who nailed down his five counties, wherever they were, could build upon them the relationships required in Texas history.
Til start with Kenedy,' Beth told her mother that night, 'because even though it's a different spelling, it's practically your maiden name.' This took care of the southeast corner of the state, and she was about to move on to four other regions when she happened to jot down in her notebook the salient facts about Kenedy County, and as soon as she had done so, a naughty idea flashed into her mind, and for about an hour she pored over the data in an old copy of the Texas Almanac, checking this county and that. Somewhat irritated by Miss Barlow's constant hammering on the size of Texas, she was seeking the five most insignificant counties, and in the end she came up with a startling collection, as the extremely neat page in her notebook proved:
The Five Leading Counties of Texas
3,271 1.367
As soon as Beth's parents saw the cynical heading, they realized that if she submitted it in that form, she was going to get into
trouble not only with her teacher but with her xenophobic classmates as well, and her mother asked tentatively: 'Don't you think, Beth, that your heading is . . . well . . . couldn't it be considered inflammatory?'