(6 of 10)
In their Dallas headquarters, six executives known as "associates" keep a close watch over assigned portions of the Murchison empire, deciding the right time to buy, to sell, or to exert more control. The associates do not get large salaries, but they benefit from a friendly Murchison—and Texan—custom: helping friends to get rich by letting them in on deals. "We want our boys to make money," says John. "If one of them makes a million, we've made 10 million. Naturally, they need very little encouragement."
The Murchisons have enough money to live as they choose—and they choose to live well. John lives with his wife and four children in an immense English Tudor house on 200 acres outside Dallas, attended by squads of help and surrounded by a collection of abstract art. He drives to work in a Porsche 1600 (one of three family cars), but prefers to travel in a Beechcraft Twin Bonanza that he pilots himself. To house it, he built a private airport two miles from his home —and, finding enough plane-owning neighbors around him, inevitably turned the airstrip into a profitable investment. Clint Jr. lives more modestly for the moment. He, his wife and four children have a three-bedroom house in an upper-middle-class Dallas neighborhood—but that is only because it has taken him seven years (and another to go) to finish his dream house. A huge ranch house set on 25 acres, it is equipped with an electronic bar that mixes drinks to order ("I don't care for tending bar"), an elaborate intercom system (designed by Clint Jr.), and a swimming pool that could float the Queen Mary. He also owns Spanish Cay, an island in the Bahamas complete with private airstrip. A physical-culture faddist, Clint Jr. does 50 pushups, 50 knee bends and 50 situps every other day. He is too busy to do them daily.
Aiding the Legend. The brothers keep in touch with their father, who at 66 spends much of his time in a wheelchair as a result of two recent strokes, but they rarely consult him about business deals any longer. To B. H. Majors, an old Murchison family friend, the boys are motivated above all by a desire "to do right by their father and the legend he has created." They certainly live by a principle inculcated in them by old Clint. Says Clint Jr.: "There isn't any sense in having $40 million in the bank or even in securities if you aren't doing something to enhance the value of those securities. Dad once gave me a great piece of advice. He said: 'Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good. But if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell.' "
The Murchisons consider themselves "speculative businessmen" who justify their business existence by spreading money around. "Some people say we are gamblers," complains Clint Jr., "but that isn't true. In gambling, you are betting on Lady Luck; in speculating, you have your mind to help you, and you are betting on yourself." Whatever "speculator" may mean to most Americans, no one needs to smile, podner, when he says it to a Murchison.