Mr. Hendricks saw the letterhead on the second offer I pulled out of my overalls, the other offer for the ground under his dealership, and he had to sit down on a hay bale.
It was from Prairie Capital, a development group out of Kansas City, the kind that buys highway frontage and puts up strip malls. They had been quietly offering farmers along Highway 50 real money for their land, and they had sent me a signed, ready offer for the acres my dealership sat on, because my twenty-five-year ground lease with Dale Hendricks had run out this year and I had not signed the renewal.
The young sales manager who called me Pop and told me the feed store was down the road did not know he had just insulted the man who owned the dirt under his seventy-eight-thousand-dollar trucks, and that another company was ready to buy that dirt out from under him.
Dale had flown in from Wichita for the twenty-fifth anniversary barbecue to give a speech about how a handshake made all this possible. Then he saw me by the grill, with Brett holding my elbow to walk me out because food was for customers, and his paper plate hit the ground. He came straight through the crowd, took my hand in both of his, and told the whole town, folks, meet Mr. Virgil Odom, he owns the ground youre standing on.
I am Virgil. I am seventy-nine. I have farmed wheat and milo outside Garden City for sixty-one years. My wife June passed three years ago and I still wear the overalls she patched. When my old Chevy finally quit at four hundred and twelve thousand miles, I drove my tractor into town and walked across Highway 50 to the dealership, and a young man named Brett looked at the mud on my boots and said, Pop, the feed store is two miles down the road, this is a seventy-eight-thousand-dollar truck, bring me a bank letter and well talk, we dont do joyrides for the coffee crowd. Two salesmen laughed.
My son-in-law said, well, Virgil, look at how you show up. I did not argue. I went home and sat at Junes kitchen table, where the renewal lease from Dales lawyers had been sitting since spring, unsigned, and I put it back in the drawer. And a while later, Prairie Capitals offer came, and I did not sign that either. I just kept both.
In 1999 Dale needed land on the highway, and I would not sell, because that was Junes daddys ground, so we signed a twenty-five-year ground lease, recorded at the Finney County Register of Deeds. Dale owns the building. I own every inch of dirt under it. And the lease ran out this year, which meant that for the first time in twenty-five years, what happened next was entirely up to me.
Dale turned to Brett and asked what he had said to this man. Brett tried to laugh and said he did not know who I was, sir. I spoke up for the first time. Thats the problem, son. You shouldnt have needed to. A man ought to be able to walk onto a lot in muddy boots and be treated like a human being, whether he owns the ground or not.
Here is what I decided, and it surprised some folks. I did not take Prairie Capitals money, even though it was more. I renewed with Dale Hendricks, because Dale honored a handshake for twenty-five years and came through a whole crowd to take my hand, and a strip mall never once did anything for Garden City. But I renewed on my terms.
The lease has a new clause now, one my lawyer in Wichita wrote plain. Every customer on that lot gets treated with respect, boots and overalls and tractors included, and the dealership runs a program every spring to help young farmers get a reliable truck at a fair price. Dale signed it without blinking. He said it was the best deal he ever made, and I believe he meant it.
Brett does not work there anymore. That was Dales call, not mine, though he asked me first, and I told him a man who decides your worth by your sleeves will do it to the next farmer too.
We dont do joyrides for the coffee crowd, Brett told me. I did not want a joyride. I wanted to be treated like a man, and when I was not, it turned out I held the ground, the lease, and a second offer in my overalls the whole time. I drive a red pickup now. Dale sold it to me himself, at cost, and he shook my hand on it, the way the whole place started.