Wednesday, June 2, 2010

UPDATE: Alan Jackson

If the children will put on their thinking caps and try to remember all the way back to June of 2009, they may recall the day Your Mama prattled on about country music star Alan Jackson and Sweetbriar, his sprawling estate in rural Franklin, TN that he had listed with a husky and exuberantly optimistic asking price of $38,000,000.

Word is now slip sliding down the gossip grapevine that Mister and Missus Jackson have pulled a rabbit from a real estate hat, unloading their lavish 135-acre spread and its nearly 19,000 square foot mansion for a record breaking $28,000,000 and change.

While the sale price is a titanic ten million clams less than Mister and Missus Jackson had hoped and aimed for, it's still many millions more than any other residential property in the Nashville area has sold for in recent memory and well over double the $11,500,000 that tech and entertainment tycoon Todd Wagner laid out in 2007 for Deer Park Farm, country queen Tanya Tucker's 22,600 square foot behemoth on 500 acres in Arrington, TN.

The new owners, according to property records and recent reports, are Willis and Reba Johnson. Mister Johnson founded a company called Copart, Inc, a Fairfield, CA based operation that auctions busted up automobiles for insurance companies and other entities with bunches of wrecked up cars to sell. According to recent filings, Mister Johnson's stake in the publicly traded company adds up to a whopping $340,000,000, making him more than financially qualified to buy and maintain an estate of this magnitude.

Property records show that among various other properties, Mister and Missus Johnson own a monster mansion on a 79-acre vineyard in the pristine Suisun Valley, just outside of Fairfield, CA. As it turns out, Your Mama has–or rather once had–a vague connection to the Suisun Valley. About a hundred years ago, when Your Mama was just a baby-faced pipsqueak attending university in northern California, we had a short but large chested and ostensibly heterosexual roommate who worked as a stripper in the local gay bars whose grandfather was an eccentric muckety-muck in the Suisun Valley. This multi-millionaire, while nine kinds of strange, was nothing but kind to Your Mama. In fact, he once purchased us a pair of sneakers at the local flea market because he didn't like us running around barefoot on his tennis court and he would sometimes do head scratching things like drive over to the local vegetable stand in his vintage convertible Rolls Royce–white with red leather interior, natch–in nothing but an itty bitty Speedo style bathing suit. We speak the truth, kiddies.

Anyhoo, in addition to the colossal colonial style mansion with its 6 bedrooms, 9 terlits, 5 fireplaces, and 20-car garage, Mister and Missus Johnson's super-sized new digs in Franklin, TN include an entrance hall with two circular staircases, a hotel lobby-like living room with a Chevy-sized chandelier–or, as Your Mama's Big Daddy would say it, a Shivvy-sized shandaleer–a paneled office suite, country kitchen, double height family room, and a sun porch that overlooks the swimming pool and spa.

The extensive grounds contain a barn-like building that houses an indoor tennis/basketball court, numerous pastures, a fish stocked 10-acre pond with sandy beach and three bay boat house, a barn with 2 bedroom apartment, and a massive entertainment terrace with outdoor fireplace. Just in case that isn't enough to maintain, there's also an ATV/go-cart track, an grass airplane runway, and a 2-bedroom log cabin that sits next to the Harpath River that winds along the edge of the property.

In June of 2009, Mister and Missus Jackson told a local newspaper that they were looking to downsize into sometime more manageable and less high maintenance.

13 comments:

Jeannified said...

What a place! That is a beautiful southern mansion! HUGE, though! I can see why they might not want to live day-to-day in something that big. You could make a fine boutique hotel out of that place!

Madam Pince said...

Mama, your life tales are just as interesting as the real estate facts you deliver to the children. I like Alan Jackson and wish him and Denise well in their new home. Yee Haw.

Jumpin Jehosephat in LA said...

So what would downsized and more manageable be in Mister and Missus Jackson's world? The Knoxville Ritz-Carlton?
I'm sorry, but unless they are running a charitable orphanage and/or home for unwed mothers (yes, I'm lazy-eyeballing you Jamie Lynn), there is little compelling reason to own an excess of a pile like this for anything but "look at me" syndrome.
I don't begrudge anyone for living comfortably, even lavishly, but the unbridled waste of finite resources is beginning to fester with me. Not unlike the bamboo splinter in my right thumb. Perhaps it's the sepsis from said splinter talking, or even the 4 gin rickys over lunch, but surely people of extraordinary wealth can find ways of making themselves feel good that don't involve quite the bloated amounts of excess like this.
I dunno, I have no reason to be in a sour mood today so I'll concentrate on happier things. Such as my short-bodied bitches Sophia and Zoee. Talk about unbridled consumers.

Georgette said...

Last thing I expected to trip on in this entry were the words "Suisun Valley". If it's the same place, I used to drive by that vineyard and home on my way home from Napa, taking Suisun Valley Road, a great backroad, to avoid the traffic on Jamieson Canyon Road. Again, if the same place, 4302 Suisun Valley Road, good view of the place on Google Earth, right before the quaint Rockville Cemetery. I always wondered who in their right mind would build such a place in that location. Now I know.

Anonymous said...

Mama:

I grew up right down the street from the Home for Unwed Mothers in Trenton NJ, on the corner of North Lenape and Edgewood Avenues and Willis' and Reba's new Tennessee pad looks (almost) just like it! I remember as a wee child of five or six asking my own mama,"How do some mamas become mamas before they get married?" Well, my mama 'splained in a huff, "It usually doesn't happen that way!" Her mouth then snapped shut quicker than slammin' a dresser drawer closed, and my papa dared not add one word! Now as a fifty-two year-old manly gay man, I'm still wonderin' how that happens.

Rod Hardwood

Barney said...

Hey Fellow Chil'ren :-)......

COULD NOT POSSIBLY AGREE WITH YOU BOTH MORE IF MY LIFE DEPENDED ON IT, "Anonymous" and "Jumpin' Jehosaphat LA"!!! When I say that NO ONE has a more psychotic, outta-control-fantasy of hittin' the lotto, and becoming FILTHY, STINKING, MAKE-YOU-WANNA'-PUKE RICH than me, but if I life to be a THOUSAND years old, I'll honestly NEVER understand people with that kinda' money building these ABHORRENTLY useless and HUGE museums-as-homes! I mean, I guaran-damn-tee ya' that the Jackson' NEVER had even HALF of that house actually utilized all at once in the entire time they lived there. Such incomprehensible EGO, GREED and psychotic MATERIALISM is obviously the sign of MICRO self-esteem.

angie said...

For someone who wanted a Southern plantation influenced colonial, they had the right idea in designing the main body of the house with the 2 story columns. That part is actually quite nice, but the rest of it is a conglomeration which looks like tacked-on afterthoughts imagined in an effort to create as massive a visual first impression as possible, which ultimately ruins it aesthetically to my way of thinking. We just moved into a new home less than a quarter of the size this one is, and I'm working overtime trying to design and decorate in a way which eliminates any hint of cavernous feel/echoing sound. I'll never understand how anyone actually comes to feel at home in a 5 digit square foot steroidal pile.

Anonymous said...

I just don't understand this. How much room does a family need? How much can one actually use? Furniture that never gets touched. Sports equipment that gathers dust. Cars that don't ever move. Pools kept warm for no other reason than someone might want to swim in it sometime next month (for 15 minutes). I don't get this. I probably never will.

Village said...

That is an obnoxious house. Just saying'.

Anonymous said...

DEAR MOMMMA, PLEASE I BEG YOU, TAKE THAT PAMELA ANDERSON PHOTO OFF YOUR BLOG...I READ YOU AT WORK AND LORDY IT WOULD BE A SHAME IF I GOT ALL KINDS A FIRED IF SOMEONE SAW THAT SKANK ON MY PUTER SCREEN...

Anonymous said...

I just don't understand the mentality of people who build these things. Furniture that no one ever touches (couches that never get sat on) sports equipment that collects dust. Pools that are kept heated for someone to take a 15 minute swim in ever couple of months. I just don't understand the waste mentality.

Fonda Richmen said...

Mama thanks for that stripper/Rolls Royce story......brought back fond memories of an old friend with a wealthy husband and a Corniche and all the adventures of my younger days in LA! The time we stopped on Stone Canyon and the gals jumped out of the car and started stripping to a song on the radio. You can't have much more fun than that......

Anonymous said...

My only question is whether Willis and Reba will put some of the wrecked cars from his old company on the front lawn in order to fit in with their neighbors. In case you're interested, their place in Suisun is for sale for $22M. Good luck in the deeply depressed and overpriced Northern California real estate market.

http://www.villademadreestate.com/