Even by Texas standards. Billie Sol Estes stood out as a spectacular example of a man who got very rich very quick. At 37, he owned or was a partner in some three dozen businesses, including grain-storage facilities, a fertilizer firm, cotton plantations, a newspaper and even a funeral parlor. Estimates of his fortune ran as high as $150 million.
A stocky, bespectacled fellow, Estes lived with his wife and five children in the most lavish house in the town of Pecos. It had palm trees out front, a 52-ft. living room with an artificial waterfall at one end....
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