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Colbert is an unwearying inspector. After a quick look in the parts department at one place, he guessed the value of the inventory—and hit it right on the nose ($55,000). He pokes into every nook & cranny, even inspects the mechanics' benches and the rest rooms, keeps an ear cocked for the smallest gripe.
Colbert plays with the same competitive gusto. On the golf course, where he shoots from 85 to 100), he needles his opponent constantly, will do almost anything to win a nickel or a dollar on a hole. His favorite crack when an opponent's putt rolls beyond the pin: "Well, nothing rolls like a ball!" He likes to drink and loves to talk—so much so that when his car ran into a snowbank recently, his twelve-year-old son cried: "Come on, everyone, and push. The Big Wind's stuck again!"
The Colberts live in a comfortable, 13-room fieldstone house outside Detroit, in suburban Bloomfield Hills, and Tex spends many an evening over schoolwork with his three children: Nicholas, 12, Sarah, 14, and Lester Lum Jr., 16.
He reads little besides papers and magazines; in his moderately stocked library the most worn books are Cattle Empire, Golf—A New. Approach, You Can Talk Well, and The Story of Texas. "He's too full of nervous energy to sit and read," says Angel. "He's just got to be doing something." Rain or shine, Colbert takes a long walk every night before he goes to bed—a habit he picked up from K. T. Keller. Says he: "Somehow, when I'm walking, my mind clears. A lot of problems I've had during the day seem to fall into place."
Infant Hustler. Colbert was born in 1905 in sleepy little Oakwood, Texas (pop. 1,000), the only son (and third child) of a well-to-do cotton farmer and a former schoolteacher. While in grade school, young Colbert jerked sodas in the local drugstore (said his boss: "The only trouble I have with Lester is keeping him from working himself to death"), later organized a group of friends to help him run a laundry route through town.
At twelve, his father gave him an old Ford jalopy; Tom Sawyer fashion, he got his friends to work on it when it needed repairs. At 13, his father taught him how to trade cotton and make money at it. At 15 he had a girl friend, Daisy Gorman (he called her "Angel"), and announced that some day he would marry her (he did). At 19 he was graduated from the University of Texas. By then, he had made enough money trading cotton (about $5,000) to go to Harvard Law School.
High Jinks, Low Marks. In Cambridge, Colbert was better known for high jinks than high marks. Once, so the story goes, while firemen were extinguishing a small dormitory blaze, he hopped on the fire engine and drove off with bells clanging. Another time, after a late party, he went to class in his dress suit (with a turtleneck sweater substituted for the coat). The professor was discussing a hypothetical charge of adultery—and what was Mr. Colbert's verdict? Sleepy Tex had not heard the evidence, but as usual had an answer: "This man must be judged guilty. Despite lack of knowledge of an overt act, circumstances under which the accused was discovered indicated that if he didn't commit the act, he should have."