Page 235 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote and Some Stuff I Didn't (2011) H. Morris Williams

and told me I had to move the plane. I told him if he wanted to move it
he could go ahead and do it. I knew he couldn’t crank it up and fly it

anywhere.”

Alex Paul, Sandy’s only son, revealed that in the days before his father
was married he used his biplane as a means of courtship.

“He used to fly over my mother’s house in Madison and drop bricks on
the roof to let her know she could drive over to Lake City and meet

him,” Alex related. “He would knock holes in the roof, but this was just
something that he liked to do.”

The reasons for the decline of the Paul family fortune were based on two
important factors. First, virgin timber land in Florida had runout and its

use as a source of revenue as well. The second was the entrance of the
Depression and the resulting halt of money flow to private enterprise.

As a result, much of the acreage owned by the East Coast Lumber
Company went to pay taxes, the remainder was sold at prices ranging

from $2.50 to $5 per acre. The tobacco lands and orange groves in
Quincy and Arcadia fell into mismanagement during the Depression and

eventually closed.

Of his family, Paul said, “One of their biggest mistakes was not hiring

professional managers.”

By the end of the Depression, almost everything the Paul’s had owned

was either sold, taken for taxes, or had become useless to them.

The only thing that remained of considerable value was timber land in

the Pacific Northwest that was sold for logging rights. The outcome of
the sale boosted the Paul fortune to dollar and cents figure that most
people of the day could hardly imagine existed.

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