Page 221 - 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

That night, sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 PM, my telephone rang, and it was the same gentleman
again. He said, “Mr. Dicks it is not my wish to annoy you or aggravate you, but my Partners have
instructed me to approach you one more time about selling Turkey Prairie”.

I recall looking up al the ceiling in the room and without any thought, except the thought of
discouraging him, I said, “If you’re willing to pay six and half million dollars cash, I could sell the piece
of land”. He said, “Consider it sold, and I will have a contract in your hands, and a binder put up on the
property, by day after tomorrow”. He did as he had promised, but I had to amend the contract to delay
the date ofclosing my sale until 1 had owned the property the necessary time to qualify the taxable gain
on it as a capital gain, rather than an ordinary gain, for income tax purposes, and 15 months and one day
after 1 bought the property, I sold it to that group for §6,500,000.00 cash.

I had only paid §2,500,000.00 for it, and I have always felt that the Lord had just decided, for some
reason, to reward me, for something 1 had done that I was unaware of.

Sometime within the next 12 months after I sold the properly, the main man in their investor group
unexpectedly died, and the remaining partners could not get up enough money to pay the monthly
payments on the money they had borrowed to purchase the property. Ultimately, it went through
foreclosure, and they lost it. As I write this portion of this book, it is late May of 2012, and Arkie Rogers
told me about a month ago that he had purchased the property from the Lender who had found it
necessary to foreclose on them. He told me what he had paid for it, and I will not repeat his secret, but
the purchase price would be a matter of Public Record in the Columbia County Courthouse. Suffice it to
say, that Arkie bought it for less than I had paid for it when I first bought it, and a tremendous amount
less than I had sold it for.

Now every silver cloud has dark lining, and today the money I made on Turkey Prairie is locked into the
Oaks Equestrian Development, south of Lake City, and due to the recession it is probably going to be a
long time before I get all of my money back out of that development.

If we can get rid of Mr. Obama, and get him out of the White House, I believe there will be an almost
over-night change in attitude of all of the business people in the United States, and I predict that within
two years of now, barring some unforeseen calamity, that we will see a big turnaround insofar as
business is concerned in this Country. 1 hope I am right.

Meanwhile, 1 have enough mortgage payments corning in on land that 1 sold years ago that 1 am able to
put groceries on the table, and do most of the other things, 1 want to do, but 1 am a long way from
having $4,000,000.00 in the bank which I had after 1 closed my sale on Turkey Prairie.

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