The Man in the Black Hat
By mastering the mysterious ways of South Texas, Clinton Manges has built an empire, amassed political influence, declared war on the state establishment—and left bitter enemies in his wake.
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Who is this man of mystery? The answer to that question lies not in Austin with the politicians or in San Antonio with the Gunslingers but in the brush country, because Clinton Manges is most of all a man of his place. Like the South Texas land itself, he does not yield his secrets easily. He operates in a region bounded by the Nueces on the north, the Valley cities on the south, the King Ranch on the east, and Dolph Briscoe’s ranch on the west, an emptiness as big as New Jersey but without a daily newspaper or a town of five thousand people or anything that passes for historical record. The story of Clinton Manges is concealed deep inside the file drawers and legal tomes of courthouses in towns far from the beaten path: Hebbronville, Zapata, San Diego, Raymondville, Rio Grande City. There, in hundreds of long-forgotten lawsuits and old property transactions, the real Clinton Manges can be discovered, the quintessential South Texas figure whose mentors were the great figures of South Texas. There was Lloyd Bentsen, the real Lloyd Bentsen, not the U.S. senator but the senator’s father, the preeminent land promoter in a region built by land promoters, who taught Clinton Manges the lessons of the land dealer’s trade. There was George Parr, the political strongman of Duval County for four decades, the notorious Duke of Duval, who taught Clinton Manges the lessons of the political boss’s trade. And finally, there was Oscar Wyatt, the head of the Coastal Corporation, the dark genius of the South Texas oil and gas game, who taught Clinton Manges the lessons of the oilman’s trade. The story of Clinton Manges is to a great extent their legacy—the result of what a man can do when he masters the lessons of South Texas.
The watershed moment of Clinton Manges’ life occurred during his late twenties, on a day when he was managing a service station in the Valley and Lloyd Bentsen stopped in for gas. At that time Manges must have been one of the least likely candidates in all of Texas for the position of power broker. His heritage was Okie, straight out of Steinbeck. Born in Cement, Oklahoma, in 1923, one of seven children, he became a nomad child of the Great Depression. As soon as he was old enough to pick cotton efficiently, he dropped out of school; his formal education did not extend beyond the elementary grades. His family moved south to Junction, where his grandfather renovated mattresses; young Clinton rode with him from ranch to ranch to pick up old bedding. He moved again, south to Port Aransas and then farther south to Raymondville, a moody and unfortunate farming town situated too far north of the Valley to have tourists and too far south of the great ranches to have oil. The end of World War II found him sweeping out the movie theater in Raymondville. But he had a way of winning people over. He married the daughter of a prosperous Raymondville farmer, and he had a knack for getting people to loan him money—not banks but townsfolk, who helped him get started in his chosen career, watch repair. He was too restless to stay with such sedentary work, and when Lloyd Bentsen drove up, Manges was still looking for his life’s calling.
While working on Bentsen’s car, Manges asked where his customer was headed. Up the road to see Farmer Jones, who had some land for sale, said Bentsen. Manges nodded, then disappeared into the building. When he emerged, he told Bentsen that he could save him a trip. He had just called Farmer Jones and bought an option on the land. Mr. Bentsen could deal with him right there.
In that one inspired moment, Clinton Manges’ life changed forever. His bravado had earned the respect and, it turned out, the financial backing of Lloyd Bentsen, then and now the leading citizen of the lower Valley. After their service station encounter, Manges began taking land deals to Bentsen, buying and selling property for his principal while Bentsen remained in the background. Manges could not have picked a better mentor. Still active today (at ninety, Bentsen farms 42,000 acres, runs cattle, works on land deals, and just bought a small railroad line), he is regarded as the premier land trader in the history of Hidalgo County. That’s saying something, because Hidalgo County has been the scene of some of the great land promotions in Texas history. Among the county’s patron saints is a silver-tongued land trader who took groups of potential buyers into the country and said, as part of his spiel, “Why, this dirt is so good, it’s good enough to eat,” which he would then proceed to do—and before long, those in the audience would reach down and sample a little dirt themselves. The prevailing ethos is best reflected by the name of the main street in the county seat, Edinburg, which honors a county official who was so enmeshed in land schemes that he was finally removed from office for corruption.
The Bentsen brothers, Lloyd and Elmer, were hardly free of controversy themselves. They were taken to court by disgruntled buyers who contended that their new citrus groves came without sufficient water for irrigation. And then there were mineral rights—or rather, there weren’t mineral rights, not if you bought from the Bentsens. Just last fall a story was making the rounds in Hidalgo County about a local doctor who was treating a patient for indigestion. The doctor felt the patient’s stomach and said, “I think I’m going to find the biggest gas play in Hidalgo County right here.” “If you do,” said the patient, “Lloyd Bentsen will own the mineral rights.”
Clinton Manges learned from Lloyd Bentsen the fundamental lesson of South Texas: land is power. Their most ambitious deal, a South Texas classic, began in 1954 when Manges and another man from Raymondville bought the 16,000-acre La Coma ranch in northern Hidalgo County with $950,000 in cash from Bentsen and set about marketing it with the unwitting help of the federal government. The federal Soil Bank program provided funds for owners of small tracts who would let their land lie fallow. La Coma, of course, was a large tract. So Manges sold off the land in pieces small enough to qualify for Soil Bank money (less than 700 acres) and told buyers that they could use government dollars to make the early payments on the land. It worked so well for La Coma that Manges and Bentsen duplicated the deal on another 7,000 acres. Alas, someone blew the whistle and the Department of Agriculture stopped the Soil Bank money. When some of the buyers couldn’t make the payments, Manges reacquired the land through foreclosures for $100. Some of the buyers were eventually successful in getting their money released by the Department of Agriculture, but by that time the land belonged to the Bentsens.
Manges was learning more and more about how South Texas worked. The La Coma deal demonstrated that the road to wealth often runs through the public treasury; Manges would invoke that wisdom on numerous occasions throughout his career. Another lesson came out of La Coma, one that shaped Manges’ hostile attitude toward oil companies and thus came to have a major impact on Texas politics years later. La Coma had once been part of the King Ranch. It was lopped off in a settlement, but that happened after the ranch leased its mineral rights to Humble Oil (now Exxon), so when Manges bought it, the King Ranch lease was still in effect. In 1960 Manges paid a visit to Humble and produced the deed to La Coma. He asserted that Humble had failed to live up to its obligation to develop his property and questioned the validity of the lease – the biggest and most lucrative oil and gas lease in Texas. The episode was a dress rehearsal for the battles Manges would wage two decades later against Mobil, Texaco, Sun, and other companies that, he would argue, had not properly developed his holdings. Humble, rather than risk a court test of its precious lease, paid up. Manges got $176,000 for his mineral rights and to extinguish his claim. But when the deed was turned over to Humble, it came from Lloyd Bentsen, the real owner of the property. Manges had learned that the relationship between oil company and landowner is that of predator and prey and that it is better to be the former than the latter.
Manges was a natural at the business of land trading. He had an uncanny instinct for assessing the value of raw land. Despite his lack of education, he had no peer when it came to understanding the intricacies of deals. He knew how to read people; he could be charming and expansive and incredibly persuasive, or, as with Humble, he could be belligerent and ruthless. That was the great advantage to Lloyd Bentsen of having a man like Manges around; when the time came to play rough, Bentsen could remain above it all, always the great man of the Valley.
Manges worked long, long hours, not only trading property but also operating a cotton gin and a bowling alley in Raymondville. They both bore the name “Mongoose,” which Manges once described as less a play on his name than a reflection of his admiration for a tough animal that likes to kill snakes. He learned to get along on two or three hours of sleep, something he still does, and to do business at any hour of the day or night. (Years later, a lawyer Manges had taken to Las Vegas on a pleasure trip was startled when Manges notified him of a business meeting that was to convene at 3 a.m.)
After the Humble triumph, however, things began to turn sour for Manges. Rains soaked the cotton fields at harvest time, and Manges, who had speculated by buying cotton on the stalk, watched helplessly as the plants withered and his investment collapsed. His commissions from land trading (20 per cent in some of the Soil Bank deals) weren’t enough to expiate the disaster. It was time to apply one of the South Texas lessons. Manges proposed that the City of Raymondville buy his bowling alley for $500,000, which he promised to use to bring industry to town. This time the road to wealth did not run through the public treasury, mainly because the mayor cast the deciding vote, against him. Never one to give up without a fight, Manges challenged the mayor in the upcoming 1961 election. The mayor took out a full-page ad in the local paper headlined DO YOU WANT THE CITY OF RAYMONDVILLE TO PAY $500,000 FOR A $250,000 BOWLING ALLEY? and asked pointedly about one pro-Manges official, “Who bought the shiny new Cadillac he is driving?” With the local establishment lined up against him, Manges lost the election by a margin of more than two to one.
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