That morning, I stood at my fence and watched an excavator hired by the homeowners association lift a pump station off its concrete pad like it was scrap iron I had left lying around.
The association president, Vanessa Whitlock, folded her arms, smiled, and told me a man like me ought to know when to listen to his neighborhood.I did not argue with her. I only asked whether she was certain she wanted to pull out the single water line feeding a $40 million golf course.Vanessa laughed at me. Six hours later, her phone would not stop ringing.My name is Gideon Price. I am 49 years old, and I own 11 acres of dry grass, mesquite, and packed caliche that sit directly behind the back nine of Silvercrest Golf Estates.On the other side of my fence, there are stucco mansions the color of vanilla ice cream, golf carts that cost more than my truck, and fairways kept so green they look painted. On my side, there is a cedar house I rebuilt myself over four summers, a metal barn with a bad door, two pecan trees, and a blue industrial pump station that has been turning over since before those mansions existed.I bought the place 14 years ago from a widow named Dolores Kingman, who sold it to me because I was the only buyer who asked intelligent questions about the water instead of the view. She walked me out to that pump, put her hand flat on the housing, and told me that as long as it ran, I would never have trouble with money. I did not understand what she meant for another six weeks, when the first annual check arrived from the golf course.The reason that pump matters, and the reason this entire story exists, is simple enough that a child could follow it—though a grown woman with a law firm on retainer somehow could not.