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"I got into the hammock business one time.
I was in Arizona.
What do you hang a hammock on in Arizona?"
 In our new Chevy Suburban with customized horse trailer, we continued to work our way around the Southwest hard-selling our products. We decided to set up a showroom in the Phoenix area. We quickly set up three showrooms. One was a wholesale showroom for saddleblankets and Mexican rugs. Another was the Navajo Rug Gallery in Scottsdale where we sold high-end Navajo rugs handwoven by the Navajo. The third was a wholesale gold jewelry distributorship.
The Navajo Rug Gallery was on West Main Street in the fine art gallery district of Scottsdale. We didn't have the gallery but about six months, then we wound up selling it to Tom Wheeler, a fifth generation Indian trader who owned the world-famous Hogback Trading Post in Waterflow, New Mexico. While we had the Navajo Rug Gallery we met a lot of the famous Western artists and sculptors, all the gallery owners and some big spending fat cats from everywhere.
One day Mr. and Mrs. Red Skelton walked into the Navajo Rug Gallery. Red was also an artist and specialized in oil paintings and sketches of clowns and some of the characters he portrayed. He was having a show and a print signing at one of the galleries. He wasn't really into Navajo Rugs, but I told him about the third business we had in Scottsdale, which was a wholesale gold jewelry and watch showroom. Red was interested and we quickly whisked him off to our gold jewelry showroom up the street at Scottsdale Oaks Plaza. Even though he was pretty elderly at the time he entertained all of us while Mrs. Skelton bought a lot of gold jewelry. He made a little drawing of a clown for Bonnie and signed it "Dear heart." Bonnie still has this framed and hanging in her office today.
How did we get into the gold jewelry business? In about 1981, the Mexican rug business went through some bumps. The peso was overvalued against the dollar. We had a hard time getting good yarn. Business was pretty flat, things were not selling very well. Even though at that time we were the biggest maker and importer of Mexican rugs and blankets, we experimented with some other things in Scottsdale.
We got into the gold business when a fellow named Joel Morrow walked into our store. He was a gold jewelry manufacturer, an importer, and a Rolex watch dealer from Houston. We talked Joel into buying lots of Navajo rugs and being the salesman he is, he talked us into the gold jewelry business.
I've met thousands of people so far on my journey: movie stars,
billionaires, rock stars, famous artists, hustlers, cons, business people, etc. But bar none, the most interesting and complex person I have ever known is my friend, Joel Morrow.
I could probably write another book twice the size of this book, just about him. I have been trading with, selling to and buying from Joel nonstop for over twenty years.
Joel was and is a tough, street smart dude that became a millionaire at a young age. What can I say? Joel is such a big, mean "pawnshop" type guy that wherever he spits, grass won't even grow there for about the next ten years. He is super honest. When you get his nod, you can take it to the bank. Everything in his life is extreme and always on the edge. After being around him a day or two, I always need at least a week off to just rest and sort things out in my own head and to rebuild, restore and repair anything that might have got in front of or near Joel.
Joel started out with a pawnshop in the seedy part of Houston. He knew all the angles of that business—all the crazies, and gangster types. Over the next few years, Joel accumulated about ten more pawnshops and became one of the largest Texas dealers of high-dollar jewelry, diamonds, gold watches and guns. The scrap gold coming in from all the pawnshops was melted down in his casting operation and cast into jewelry.
In the early 1980s, I became Joel's guy in Phoenix and in El Paso.
We sold gold jewelry by weight and lots of used Rolex watches and accessories. Joel is a collector and trader of almost everything. Guns,
jewelry, Indian rugs, baskets, you name it. He bought a $300,000 motor home. He even collected World War II tanks at his ranch mansion outside of Houston.
He was the ultimate money maker and money spender. He was not afraid of the Devil himself. He could be rude, mean and kindhearted, all at the same time. He was calculating, smart and sometimes reckless. He was an African safari hunter and adventurer who bagged elephants and tigers. In fact, about the only thing that could make Joel pee in his pants was shooting elephants as they charged him. He traded me zebra skins and all sorts of African items over the years.
Although I enjoyed the excitement of being around Joel, I never particularly liked the gold business. It was a dangerous business. You always had to keep looking over your shoulder, and I was always packing. Sometimes I would forget and walk into a bank or somewhere with my loaded 38. I was always dropping the damn thing.
Bonnie hated the gold and jewelry business and we eventually got out. Joel sold the pawnshops for about twenty million dollars and then went on a suicidal spending binge. He bought another beautiful river ranch in Bay City and then proceeded to buy all the adjoining land. He had been dealing in gold jewelry and pistols in Italy for many years, but a few years ago he went to Russia and started more businesses in guns and God knows what else. He's still a great friend, loves El Paso and comes out here a lot with his wife, Lydia Ann. When he leaves, I always call him on his cell phone an hour or so after he goes, just to be sure he gets out of town so I can finally relax a little. I love this wild man and someday I might write a book about Mr. Morrow.
While Joel and I were still in the gold business in Scottsdale, we started doing business with Troy Murray. Troy was a twenty-five year veteran of the West Main Street art gallery district in Scottsdale and probably the biggest dealer of western art in the world. He was one of the best salesmen I've ever met, and he was super smooth with the rich folk. He was a real charmer, and we became big buddies almost from the time we met. Not only did we refer business to each other, but Troy and I sold a lot of gold jewelry and Rolex watches to his big customers. He was a stand up, honest guy, and we worked great together. He was already very wealthy but loved to sell and hustle.
I remember Troy had this cocky young guy who had just inherited a huge fortune. Troy stroked him and had the guy eating out of his hand. He loved Troy and Troy "helped" this guy find great art. This guy also loved gold. He often flew in from Las Vegas in his private jet with all
his high rolling friends, and it was "Christmas" for us whenever he
came around.
One day, the normally happy-go-lucky Troy came into our Navajo Rug Gallery with a long, sad face. Our big-spending buddy and some of his high rollin' friends had just crashed their jet in the side of the Grand Canyon. Christmas had just came to an end for Troy and Dusty. Troy is retired now and we still keep in touch. He was the best at what he did.
While we were based in Phoenix, we looked around to try to expand our rug production and decided to try and set up a production facility in the U.S. I sold a few rugs to a guy who had a lot of experience setting up training programs on American Indian reservations. We talked and decided to try and set up a rug weaving facility for the Pasqua Yaqui tribe outside of Tucson.
At that time, the Pasqua Yaqui were a desperately poor people from Mexico that had just been recognized as a Native American tribe here in the U.S. They were so poor that the only way they could earn money was by selling bags of charcoal.
Our idea was to get funding to train the Pasqua Yaqui to weave and
set up a manufacturing facility on their reservation. But as we pursued the project, we began to feel uncomfortable. The guy we were working with was everything we always kind of despised about the ultra-liberals. He was really nothing more than a professional grant writer who figured that the government owed him and everyone else a living.
His idea was to get as much training money as possible, even though the program he proposed was completely unrealistic. When we said that the Pasqua Yaqui we trained under his plan wouldn't be able to support themselves by weaving just for us, the guy blew us off and said, "That's OK. We'll worry about that later." This guy knew where to get money from the Catholic Church, from CETA, from a whole bunch of government sources, but he didn't have any idea how to set up a business. Once the training money was gone, he would be on to the next grant, and we would be left with a bunch of underemployed weavers.
Even though we felt uncomfortable about the deal, we went along with it. Our political beliefs have never gotten too much in the way of making money, which is true for most people. We were going to put in a weaving factory and set up mobile homes and help the Pasqua Yaqui go from zero to something.
We almost went ahead with the deal. But just at that time, the Seminole Indians hit it big with high stakes bingo. They made so much money that they were able to approach other tribes to set up bingo operations. They financed bingo among the Pimas and the White River Apaches. Then they financed a bingo operation among the Pasqua Yaquis. Instead of weaving, the Pasqua Yaquis did bingo—and made millions of dollars. In the end, the Indian bingo and gambling operations actually helped El Paso Saddleblanket. Today, Indian casinos are some of our biggest customers.
Bonnie recalls, "By 1982, we were getting a little road weary. Along with running the Scottsdale business, we had managed to put another 100,000 miles on the Suburban, going to shows and seeing customers. We did not want to become like some of the older salesmen we knew. A salesman on the road is like the tread on your tires. You only have so much tread, and eventually you wear it down.
"We felt our own tread wearing down and decided to change our operations. We opened a wholesale showroom in Phoenix at 2424 East Indian School Road. Although we owned a comfortable house in Scottsdale, we found it much more practical to skip the traffic and move into the basement apartment below the warehouse. We continued to commute back and forth to El Paso, but living beneath the warehouse proved to be the most productive period of our entire career. We worked eighteen hours a day and had more energy than ever. After supper, we went back up to the office and worked until midnight. Dusty did the advertising and promotional work, I did the books, and Sid and his new girlfriend Sadie chased around the showroom playing tag and rolling wildly in the Peruvian Alpaca rugs.
"We managed to significantly increase our customer base by mass mailings and the addition of toll free 800 telephone lines. Dennis Rice came on board with us in 1983 and helped us perfect the art of follow-up phone calls to customers. Today, he is our general manager.
"One of the worst things about operating from Arizona was that the East Coast customers called at 6 a.m.! We could barely communicate with them anyway, between Dusty's West Texas drawl and their East Coast accent.
"Finally in 1984, all signs were 'go' to set up back home in El Paso. We found a place for ourselves and our inventory at 5000 Alameda Street, on old Highway 80, and we opened a large wholesale showroom. Finally, El Paso Saddleblanket Company had a Texas address, and we settled in to make the most of it."
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