I had some horses that I would rather have sold than my pretty pair of fire horses. I knew that I would sell them and sell them pretty quick, and I knew that I wouldn’t get any more like them.This old man says, “What will you take for those horses?””I will take three hundred dollars for them.”
That was two percent [meaning 200% profit] on the hundred I paid for them. He liked to tore his pocket off getting his billfold out. Just stripped out three one-hundred-dollar bills and handed me the three hundred dollars…
–Ray Lum in Mule Trader: Ray Lum’s Tales of Horses, Mules and Men (1998).
This book is a fun read and a fascinating history. The expression “Liked to tore his pocket of” going for money has always been a great image of a customer ready to buy. May you have many like the old man.
