A couple years ago my gave dad me the deed to two parcels of land in Kenna, New Mexico (Roosevelt County). This land is fairly worthless in a monetary sense. It’s assessed at a total of 1200 bucks. I pay 7 dollars a year tax on it. I’ve never been there.
But the story behind the land is priceless.
The two lots belonged to my deceased great uncle, John Eddy, of Jamestown, New York (where I went to college.) John died in the 60s. He got the land in some oil scam that ended up taking a lot of money from him.
I knew John’s sister, my Aunt Ida, who was sweet and senile when she stayed with us, when she was very very old and I was very very young. I clearly remember her putting envelopes in the freezer, thinking she was mailing letters to her dead brother.
She influenced me in a way. She was often very “spacey” (her words), and made me feel that it was OK to think and say strange things.
Anyway, a company called The Dalies Oil Company sold land and stock to war vets (among others) like my uncle. Then they milked the “investors” for their money in frequent requests for continuing payments to “develop the land and drill for oil.”
My dad also gave me about ten pounds of wonderful papers connected with this land, stock certificates, newspaper clippings, maps, and much of the correspondence between John Eddy and this Los Angeles-based scam company.
Among the papers are hand-typed postcards that the company sent each month to the “investors”, talking about how well the oil search was going, how many feet down they’d drilled, what new equipment they needed to purchase, the frequent snags they ran into, how much more money they needed to complete the important work, and of course, how they were still absolutely positive they were going to make everyone rich.
The notes are so over the top that I doubt any actual drilling was ever done.
I don’t know what I’m ever going to do with the land, and have had no plans for the huge pile of musty documents. I’ve thought about writing a sort of docu-drama movie and using my great uncle’s misfortune at the beginning of the oil boom as a parallel for what’s happening now as the oil starts to run out. But probably not.
My wife and I did write a cartoon script (called “The Plump Buffet”) that will most likely never be produced, that takes place on the land. It’s about a sex cult run by cats.
When I phoned up the Roosevelt County clerk to find out how to transfer the title from my dad to me, she seemed to think it was hilarious that a father in New York was giving this worthless New Mexico land to a son in Los Angles. I think she figured us both for city slickers. I had several calls with her and she always seemed pretty jolly about the whole situation.
I asked her what I’d have to do to build out there. She said, “Well, first you’ll need to scrape the land with a backhoe to get rid of the rattlesnakes.” I asked her what permits I’d need. She laughed and replied, “You don’t need permits. You can do whatever you want out there. If the neighbors don’t like it, they’ll just shoot you.”
The population of Kenna proper is “estimated at less than 25 people.”
(Google satellite image of Kenna)
John Eddy also owned oil-scam land in Valencia county, New Mexico that actually ended being sold for a lot of money to build a mall. Unfortunately, the lazy bank my dad put in charge of paying the taxes defaulted and my family lost that land.
This oil scheme bilked John Eddy out of a lot of money, a few bucks at a time, over a decade.
No oil was ever found. The whole thing reminds me of a Nigerian e-mail scam, but from the 1950s. And John Eddy ended up in a mental hospital.
My brother James pointed out “These people were able to continue this scam, simply because in those pre-commercial airplane days, no one went there to check on it.”
OK….Here’s the really fun part. I got an e-mail the other day from an old friend named John Murphey. Cool cat, we played music together in the Bay Area right before I formed Bomb. He found me after 20 years, while searching info on the H2 digital audio recorder. He plans to get one to use for recording interviews on his job, which just happens to be as a state historian for New Mexico.
John Murphey wrote:
I startled when you mentioned John Eddy; I thought you were related to THE JOHN EDDY, the big-shot cattle baron who once owned half of SE New Mexico. Your life may have been a little different if your great uncle was cattleman, John Eddy. Land/oil scams were big in the 1930-50s. You are actually the second person of our age to tell me they own worthless land in Kenna. Yeah, I’ve been there and helped the community write a history on the sole surviving commercial building - the grand Midway Service Station. An extract of that narrative appears on the State Historian’s web site:
http://www.newmexicohistory.org/filedetails_docs.php?fileID=21168
Do you have the exact coordinates or lat/longs for the land? Does it have an access easement? Can I camp there? Send me the screenplay.
Attached are some pics I took of Kenna’s Hi-Lonesome landscape.
I wrote him back:
I forgot to tell you the best thing in the collection of John Eddy papers that I have. A big fold-out map of the ground plan for Kenna, with lot numbers, and street names like “Oak” and “Elm”. It looks like a map of an existing town, which may be what they were telling people on both coasts as they sold them the dry swampland.
Also, THE John Eddy (rich cattle dude) was no relation, but my dad says my great-grandfather invented the cattle chute, and some neighbor stole the idea under him and patented it.
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I have wondered what I’m going to do with the two lots. I registered the domain name TimeShareFromHell.com two years ago, but let it expire this year.
Maybe I’ll just content myself with being a proud member of the landed gentry, keep mailing in my seven dollars a year in tax, and know that when California starts falling into the sea, me and the wife will have a place we can go camp.
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So the upshot is that John Murphey asked if the State of New Mexico could have my John Eddy papers. As nifty as the collection is for me to have, I’m probably going to donate it, as it’s a lot more useful in the hands of a state historical society than in a box the back of my closet.
Link to a bunch of photos and scans from the John Eddy file.
Get episode 0053
(Helios checks his e-mail. Photo by Michael Dean)
