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These deals, by which Estes obtained more than 3,000 acres of cotton allotments in the course of two years, were legal only if the sale of the land was a bona fide sale, and if the default was a bona fide default. Since Estes' deals with the farmers were set up in the expectation that they would default, the deals were obviously suspect. After long delays, the Agriculture Department finally decided this month that the deals were faked, and fined Estes for growing cotton under the illegally obtained allotments.
Too Garish for Texas. Estes' rickety empire was doomed to collapse sooner or later under the weight of its accumulating deficits. But while it lasted, his rapidly burning candle at least gave off a bit of dazzle. With his wife and five children, Estes lived in the most lavish house in town. Out in the backyard, he had a swimming pool and Texas-sized barbecue facilities. The Amarillo Daily News called him "probably the biggest wheeler and dealer in all of West Texas." He conveyed an impression that he wielded a lot of political influence beyond the boundaries of Pecos. and even beyond Texas. He liked to flash a card indicating that he had donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party during the 1960 campaign. He displayed on the walls of his office photos, some fondly signed, of President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, John McClellan and other Democratic political notables. He boasted of his friendships with politicians, including Texas' Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough.
But for all his aura of wealth and power, Billie Sol remained a somewhat ridiculous figure; the inner bumpkin kept showing through. One acquaintance recalls him as "the kind of man whose lapels always seem a little too wide." He sported a diamond stickpin that seemed garish even in Texas. He was constantly bumbling into grotesque situations. Invited to Governor Clement's second inaugural in 1955, he was the only guest to show up in the ornate regalia of a Tennessee colonel. In 1956 he made a fool of himself by trying to persuade the president of a Pecos bank to help finance a wacky scheme to help Adlai Stevenson win the election. Under the Estes plan, large schools of parakeets, trained to say "I like Adlai" in unison, would fly over U.S. cities. When the banker tried to tell Estes that parakeets could not be trained to say "I like Adlai," much less say it in unison, Estes got purple-angry, accused the banker of being anti-Stevenson and stomped out.
Estes was widely feared in Pecos because of his seeming wealth and power. But he was not widely liked. When he ran for a place on the local school board last year, he lost to a write-in candidate. That humiliating defeat led to Estes' downfall. The local paper, the twice-weekly Independent, had opposed him for the