Page 101 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

SI 00,000.00. He had given them $1,000.00 for the option to purchase at that price, and told me that if I
wanted to buy his option, he would sell it to me for his $1,000.00, back plus another $1,000.00. The net
effect was that my new office building cost me a total of $102,000.00, and my Real Estate Business has
been in that same location ever since.

That property would now be worth about $400,000.00. As Lake City people will already know, it is
located between the Florida Highway Patrol Headquarters and Rountree Moore Toyota. It turned out to
be an absolutely perfect location for a real estate business, and I later found out something about the
traffic at that location in Lake City, which is still true today. The daily traffic count of automobiles
passing by that location is the highest traffic count, from the Baya Avenue Intersection down to the
Sisters Welcome Road Intersection, of any other road in the County, including Interstate 75. I have been
told that there are over 60,000 vehicles that pass in front of Dicks Realty each and every day, and my
Real Estate Sign has been read by people passing by there thousands and thousands of times.

When I first opened my office, I took listings from other property owners, and would sell their
properties for a commission. I did not take me long to realize that I could make more by simply buying
and selling my own properties than 1 could make by selling on commission, and therefore I gradually
eased out ofthe listing business and for many, many years, as long as I was active, I only sold my own
properties.

Some people may not know it, but I take credit for inventing rapping. I used to run ads on the radio
which rhymed and which I would speak in a rapping style very similar to the rap music you hear today,
but my raps had a message about my business and what we had for sale. I still have tapes of most of
those old rap commercials, and even today 1 find some of them to be quite humorous. They went over
very well with the public. A lady told me many years back that her son was attending a place kicking
camp run by the kicker from the Seattle Seahawks, and while he was attending the kicking clinic she got
to talking to the NFL Player who was putting on the clinic and did all the kicking for the Seattle
Seahawks, and in that conversation he asked her where she was from she said, “I am from Lake City,
Florida,” he said “Isn’t that the place where that crazy real estate man does all those rapping
commercials?” So I suppose my fame as a rapper extended further than I ever thought it would, and I
probably never should have stopped doing them.

I have been told by people that they would be taking their kids to school and one of my rapping
commercials would come on the radio and they would start to change stations, and their kids would say,
“wait mama, wait mama, let’s hear what Mr. Dicks is going to say,” and they’d make their parents listen
to those commercials on the way to school. So it turned out good, and that’s just a little bit about my real
estate history.

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