Sherwood Blount’s First Million
Poor Texas boys used to get rich running cattle or drilling for oil. Now they get rich doing real estate deals out on the urban frontier. And those deals all start with someone deciding he doesn’t want to be poor—ever again.
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Like Peter Shaddock, Jerry Stiles is in the business of building expensive new brick homes in North Dallas with sloping shingled roofs and double wooden doors and leaded windows. Both men build houses for people much like themselves, and, for that matter, like Sherwood: self-made millionaires who have gotten rich as Dallas has grown and want a house that shows it. “You’re a success, and you wear it well,” says Stiles’ advertisements. “There’s no better reason to consider a new J. Stiles custom home. Everything about it says success. Prestigious location. Preferred schools. Award-winning style and design. Perfection in craftsmanship. And an unyielding desire to excel in everything we do. Success. Elegant formal rooms. Sybaritic bathing areas. But perhaps the most memorable climax of all is just to revel in the knowledge that you’re in a rare setting with a privileged outlook. Success. It feels good. Come share your success with us.” Now success was going to come to this placid maize field by a railroad track.
Shortly after buying the 201 acres, Stiles had hinted to Sherwood that he might be willing to sell it for $8 million, an immediate 33 percent profit. It was not entirely clear what Stile had in mind here: he is a restless and cryptic man and his motives are hard to divine. Perhaps something had come up — difficulties in getting financing, say, or a sudden need for cash — to make it imperative that he unload the property right away. Perhaps, having bought it, he was now tired of it. Perhaps he had no intention of selling it and just wanted reassurance that it was worth more than he had paid for it, or wanted it broadcast by Sherwood in the real estate community that he had gotten a good price in the first place. It was impossible to tell. Stiles, like Sherwood and Shaddock, had already made so much money that he was now driven by various complex forces — boredom, craftsmanship, competitiveness, desire for glory — as well as economic ones. But Shaddock, sitting in Sherwood’s Cadillac, knew there must be some reason why he had been brought out here.
“Stiles wants to sell this?” he said, looking out across his competitor’s deal.
“Yep,” said Sherwood.
“Why?”
“Oh, I’ve convinced him there’s still some profit in it.”
“How much does he want for it?”
“He says forty thousand an acre. That’s eight million dollars. I think he might go for thirty-seven-five, though.”
“Hm,” said Shaddock.
They backed out the dirt road and went south a ways on Preston Road then turned back into the magic corridor on another road. They drove past some plowed-up fields and across a creek and stopped at an iron gate in the middle of a beautiful stand of woods. They were exactly in the center of the most coveted land in Dallas now, at the entrance to John McKamy’s house.
John McKamy is the great-grandson of the first settler in the magic corridor, William Cooper McKamy, who came to this parcel of land from Tennessee in 1832. William McKamy acquired 1800 acres — which later became most of Renner — and farmed it, raised a family, and founded a school and a cemetery and a church. Just before the Civil War, he built a spacious one-story white house on a rise overlooking White Rock Creek, and that’s where John McKamy, now 57 years old, lives today. Over the years the McKamys became rich by selling off their land bit by bit, and the old home place now stands on 324 acres, separated by a couple of subdivision tracts from the old church and the cemetery, which is now full of McKamys.
Despite the ardent efforts of every realtor in North Dallas, John McKamy has steadfastly refused to sell the 324 acres. Everybody thinks his home place would make a wonderful subdivision. As far as Sherwood and Shaddock were concerned, the Ballinger deal was a good deal, certainly, but it was only a maize field: whereas the McKamy deal was tucked a respectable distance away from the railroad tracks, and was full of woods and meadows and backed onto a lovely creek. McKamy was so rich that he didn’t need to sell the land. But real estate people know that everybody sells sooner or later, when the price and the time are right, and McKamy seemed just interested enough to keep the offers coming in. He was caught between two systems of values — the old one in which he had been brought up in which one’s status was a product of the size and age of one’s land holdings; and the new one of present-day Dallas, in which one’s status was just a function of how much money one had. At times McKamy seemed to want to be a country squire; at other times he wanted to be a Dallas millionaire. On top of all that, he is a man of many eccentricities.
Sherwood and Shaddock had tried hard to buy the land. They had slopped hogs with McKamy. They had brought him contracts. They had spread feed for him. Nothing seemed to work. The suburbs grew closer and closer, until they brushed up against McKamy’s fence line. McKamy was now surrounded by them, obviously standing in the way of progress. But he held on to his home place.
Sherwood drove up McKamy’s private road. The land rose to a crown and the woods dropped away. The old house stood at the top of a rise, surrounded by a grassy pasture that sloped gently down to the creek. A couple of horses were grazing idly, and nobody seemed to be home.
“I wonder where he went this time,” said Sherwood.
“Sherwood,” said Shaddock, “you know what we ought to do? We ought to come out here to McKamy’s place every morning, until we talk him into selling it. That’s what we ought to do if we want to buy this property instead of somebody else.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, this is the land I want. This is first place. Stiles’ land is second.”
“Well, John’s not here. What do you want to do on the Stiles deal?”
“Well, Sherwood,” said Shaddock, “I really don’t know.”
At noon that day Sherwood drove down to the LTV tower and took the elevator up to the Lancers, a men’s lunch club. He scanned the room — taking in leather couches, dark wood tables, men sitting in earnest groups of three or four with papers spread in front of them, making deals — until he spotted the man he was looking for, Norman Medlen. Norman played in the line for SMU in the mid-sixties, and now he’s a huge, beefy guy with a sweet, unlined smile and a big bay window on which his neckties perch daintily. He looks like a very big angel. Norman is Jerry Don Stiles’ right-hand man.
Sherwood and Norman talked football for a while, and then Stiles came over and sat down. He is a man of average size and build, but real estate people tend to run into the big sizes, and amid his business associates Stiles looks elfin. He has piercing, emerald-green eyes and a beard that climbs up the hollows of his cheek in a way that makes him look wise and mysterious, which isn’t the way most homebuilders look.
“How you doing, Jerry Don?” said Sherwood. “I wanted to see you about that Ballinger land. You still want to sell it? ‘Cause I think I may have a buyer.”
“Who is it?” said Stiles.
“Now I can’t say his name, but he’s a good builder-developer here in town, just like yourself.”
“Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you, Jerry.”
“Well, let’s see.” Stiles stroked his beard and stared at Sherwood, as if with his strange brilliant eyes he could somehow see inside him and divine the name. “There’s Talmadge Tinsley. There’s Peter Shaddock.”
Sherwood raised his hand. “That’s enough.”
“Hm,” said Stiles. “Well, you tell this builder-developer that I want to sell the whole two hundred and one acres and I want to sell it for eight million dollars. That’s an easy deal, right? I gotta go now, but you stay and have lunch on my tab, Sherwood.”
“Don’t have time for lunch, Jerry,” said Sherwood and gathered up his papers and left.
Now Sherwood could go back to Shaddock with the information that the land was definitely for sale. The first prerequisite for a deal is that the seller really wants to sell; this, it seemed, was true. The second prerequisite is that the buyer really wants to buy, and being sure of this was Sherwood’s next problem. He knew Shaddock was running low on house-building land and had to have some soon, but he also knew that Shaddock’s heart was set on the McKamy land. Somehow he had to figure out a way to get Shaddock to put the McKamy deal out of his mind — not forever, of course, since Sherwood wanted to make that deal later, but for long enough to make the deal with Stiles. He didn’t know yet how to accomplish that, but he was confident he’d find a way. The best thing to do now was to see Shaddock.
“I saw Stiles,” Sherwood said when he sat down in front of Shaddock. “He told me to reply to anyone who inquires that the two hundred and one acres is for sale for eight million dollars. That’s the story. He made it very plain and very simple.”
Shaddock regarded Sherwood across his desk. All around him were the accoutrements of a homebuilder’s work—blueprints, carpet samples, doorknobs, subdivision plats, plumbing fixtures, floor tiles. “I don’t really think he wants to sell it,” he said. “I think he just wants to run the price up and make himself feel good about buying it. I don’t see why he’d want to sell it. He doesn’t need the money. He’d just have to shelter it.”
“I think he wants to sell,” said Sherwood.
“You really do?”
“I really do.”
“What d’you think it’d take?”
“I wouldn’t offer more than thirty-five thousand an acre. I tell you what he’d take, about thirty-seven-five.”
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