Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I loved those guys. They brought me in on a few million dollars of real estate with a few
pages of options as the major up-front outlay that would get us into the deal. Actual cash
down was less than the three of us would spend on a month of gas and groceries. Billy and
the banker had no clue on market response but were willing to take the risk on our sales boy,
who was me. My two main bubbas weren't so cynical on the right guy for the job relative to
the sales issue. They loved me right back because we'd made solid dough together and could
do it again on a more genteel scale, because I was perfect—because I didn't even wear shoes in
the summertime! They couldn't get over it: thirty sales in sixty days in flip flops! They viewed
my casual approach to
bidness
as the magic ingredient to several million more dollars.
Billy figured we'd clear ten to fifteen grand a unit, depending on momentum. Too much
time meant too much exposure, so we might have to fire sale the last few. Who knew? But I
should clear two or three grand a unit—wait a minute? Twelve hundred times two thousand?
That's two million, four hundred thousand dollars!
“You gonna live there, bubba! Two years. Maybe three.”
And I would have done it as a sentence without parole that wouldn't be so bad on account
of the colorful adventures surely waiting. Talk about grist for the mill!
I declined.
Two to three years of prime fillet in a writer's career could not be sacrificed for money.
And no, I did not want to be a southern writer, not even in the bona fide projects striving for
gentrification.
They say nobody knows what might have been on the road not taken. I don't believe it,
and I slap my knee on a peek down the south fork.
Sheeyit.
Moreover, I had faced the cop out and moved on.
