Word: backed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Milfred Yant is a man with a remarkable air of respectability; it is accentuated by his pudgy figure, his middle-aged stoop, his brownish hair and open countenance. Back in 1935, as a result, he had little difficulty in selling acres & acres of steep, arid, brush-covered land in the barren hills above Los Angeles County's Placerita Canyon. The tract looked like a rest home for Gila monsters, but he got $1,950 an acre for it-just $1,900 more than he had paid...
Promoter Yant sold parcels of land as small as a hundredth of an acre. An agent (employed by Yant) sought out the small buyers, confided that he represented a major oil company, and offered $5,000 for a full acre; many hurried back and bought more land. They never saw the mysterious oil agent again...
...Back to Pokey. After he was turned loose, the law found it necessary to lock him up again for violating his parole: he had celebrated his release by helping a friend bilk an old lady out of her money. When he got out the second time, the war was on. He went to Honolulu, talked himself into a job with the Army Engineers, and in three months was bossing 300 electricians. Then he returned to the mainland and, despite his prison record, got a job at the Hanford atomic-energy plant. In 1944 he went back to California...
...opened an electrical-appliance store in the little town of Hollister, and lived quietly. But early this year he got back into action...
...canyon. The results were spectacular. Amid angry litigation set off by the rush, the California" superior court reversed a law which allowed but one well to the acre, and oil derricks began to rise on Yant's old subdivision like quills on a porcupine's back. In less than a week, 44 drilling rigs were trucked up the single road to the field; 10,000 men labored feverishly at the task of tapping the common oil pool below...