Billie Sol: King of Texas Wheeler-Dealers

by Pam Estes

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0915733005
• ISBN13: 9780915733002
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Noble Craft Books
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Bought as a gift

I bought this as a gift for my mother. She knows the Estes family. In any case she was happy to get this book as a replacement for a book she had lost.

Billie Sol Estes-I Was There

I have a copy of Billie Sol: King of the Wheeler-Dealers, and it is one of my most prized possessions. It is autographed by both Pam and by Billie Sol. I grew up in Pecos, Texas, right in the middle of that whole thing, and I firmly believe that Pam's book tells it like it was. Bille Sol was a wheeler-dealer, and I won't pretend that everything he did was right, but he was not the crook he was made out to be by those in the government who bailed out on him. They did everything they could to put it all off on him, in order to save their own skin, including framing him for things he was not guilty of. As far as the fertilizer tanks, people in Pecos had enough faith in him to know he would have ulitmately delivered those tanks. He had too much invested in Pecos not to. Common sense would tell that to anyone. He did more for Pecos than anyone ever has, before or since. Unfortunately, he was brought down, not because people were worried about the way he did business, but because of a few jealous biggots, who were afraid of the competition when he put in his own newspaper. With no regard for the people they would hurn or for what it would do to the town,immediately went on a witch hunt, which grew into a quest for the coveted pulitzer prize. I hope it was worth it because it was the beginning of the end for our once thriving little town, and no good came from it at all. Suzanne Barker Massey (Ashley)

I'm impressed!

Several years ago, someone who knew that my father had once worked in the fertilizer business for Billie Sol Estes, gave me this book written by his daughter, Pam Estes. Since the author is the daughter of Billie Sol Estes, I didn't give it much chance of being an objective and unbiased work. Well, I recently dusted the book off and finally got around to reading it, and I owe Pam Estes an apology. I was truely impressed with her work. The Estes family has long been known to be big financial supporters of Texas Democrats. Billie Sol Estes never lost that loyalty. I thought the author might hold that same loyalty, but found rather, that she was brutally honest. She never paints her father as an innocent man, but successfully portrays him as a victim of Democrat backstabbing. When it became apparent that Billie Sol Estes was going down, people who had benefited greatly from his contributions and who had enabled him to do the things he had done, such as Ralph Yarborough and Lyndon Johnson were not about to go down with him. The author even firmly suggests a theory which I have long held, that LBJ was the one man in America who had the motive, power and ability to successfully have JFK murdered without being caught. LBJ was no longer needed for the southern vote and would not have been on the 1964 ticket with JFK. He knew that and wasn't about to lose his power. Pam Estes is also honest about her father's short comings. While it is obvious that her love for her father never waivered, she lets the reader know in subtle ways, that life with Billie Sol wasn't always easy. For example, she talks about a man who had been making advances towards her mother and how those advances had gone unnoticed. She concludes, "After all, if you're married to Billie Sol Estes, you don't have time for any more problems." The story of Billie Sol Estes is not the story of a crooked Texas wheeler dealer. It is the story about an ambitious man who found himself on the wrong side of a game of political chess. His is the story of what kind of power and destruction is wielded by the federal government and how the government can destroy a family anytime, anywhere and for any reason. All in all, this is a very enjoyable read. I'm sorry I waited so long to read it.