Elroy,
Your speculation inspired me to get on my motorcycle and ride across town to the public library. <g> In the eight Reagan or Nancy and Ronnie biographies they have there all but three mention the 1974 purchase of "Rancho del Cielo" above Santa Barbara, the "Reagan Ranch". Actually, it was the second or third Reagan Ranch. He owned a ranch in the 1950's when he hosted GE Theater. He bought another Ranch in 1968 which he still owned when he purchased "Rancho del Cielo".
Curiously, the three most critical Reagan bios make little or no mention of the Ranch including the Kitty Kelly and the Edmund Morris books.
The work with the most detail about the ranch was "Make Believe, the story of Nancy and Ronnie" by Laurence Leamer, which was in some parts a pretty critical effort. According to Leamer Reagan already owned a 778 acre ranch south of LA which he bought in 1968 for $347,000. And he paid a $90,000 down payment for the Santa Barbra ranch. That would have left a balance of over $400,000 on the property....but the next year, 1975, Reagan grossed over $800,000 in mostly speaking fees for which he recieved $10,000 per appearance, making as many as ten per month.
And as we well know Reagan continued this line of work for four more years. Also, at some point he sold the LA ranch and by that time he was US President and raking in the big bucks for eight years. So why in the world he would have needed ANYBODY to buy the ranch for him I can't imagine.
The Leamer book implies that Reagan bought it himself, though it doesn't say so in that many words. I will research this more as time permits.
My money sez that you are wrong about this, though who knows for sure.
I have become much fonder of Reagan as the years pass; my original beef with him was that he "stole the thunder" of my party, the Libertarian Party back in 1980.
Now if this was a question about one of the various Jimmy Carter skullduggeries or one of Carter's trademark swindles I would have been up to speed without the motorcycle trip to the library. With Reagan I have a bunch of blank spots that I guess I need to fill. <grin>
Slagle |
