The Big Itch They Call Little John

Nothing is more irritating than other people's possessions. The man next door may be the best friend you have in the world, but when he shows up one evening driving a new Mercedes 230- SL and beeps the two-toned horn and gives you that cavalier wave of the gloved hand, you could bust that rat-fink right in the mouth.

If this be true, then the most irritating single American has to be a fullback-sized, blandly handsome young Texan named John Mecom Jr., known to his friends as "Little John" to differentiate him from his father, who at 6 feet 2 and 225 pounds is just a size larger. Anything you can buy, Little John can buy better. You say you just bought a TR-4 with wire wheels and a windshield washer? Little John has 15 cars: Ferraris, a Lotus, a Scarab, a Lola, several De Tomaso racers, Corvettes, Mustangs, Fiats, half-tracks, full-tracks, jeeps and an Amphicar that he can drive across rivers. You say you just bought a Cessna with a retractable landing gear and a supercharger? The Mecoms have a four-engined Viscount turboprop, a Convair, a vintage B-23, helicopters, seaplanes and light planes for a grand total of 10. You say you splurged and made a down payment on that summer place in Vermont? Little John's family has two ranches in Colorado, 780,000 acres in Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico, a lavish layout with asphalt landing strip on the Mexican border in Laredo, Texas, several mansions in Houston, three hotels and a permanent suite at the Waldorf Towers in New York City. You say you went to Wyoming last year and shot an elk? Little John, at the tottering age of 25, has all but retired from hunting because he has taken every specimen of African big game except the bongo and the rhino and potting animals is beginning to pall on him. Little John has 75 pets, including lions, zebras, lesser kudus, ostriches, llamas and pussycats. He also has a beautiful (and wealthy) wife, a string of racehorses and polo ponies, a fleet of boats including the Little John (200 feet), a collection of rare guns numbering upward of 300, a home in the snooty River Oaks section of Houston and a wardrobe so tasteful and natty that he seems to think it a cardinal sin to appear more than once in any given outfit and frequently changes clothes three or four times a day just for the hell of it.

In a word, John Mecom Jr. is loaded. He is the realization of everyman's ambition times 1,000. The family fortune runs in the pleasant neighborhood of $200 million, and each year more millions come seeping out of the Mecom oil wells, the Mecom hotels, the Mecom plastics company, the Mecom natural gas pipeline, the Mecom chemical plant and other diversified Mecom interests.

But "great wealth and content seldom live together," as Thomas Fuller observed to the vast satisfaction of those of us who have to take his word for it. Do "great wealth and content" live together in young John Mecom? Happily for the worlds of competition and conservation, they do not. It is true that Little John has his gratifications: banging away at bobcats and coyotes with a Thompson submachine gun from the top of a half-track, slipping over to Bechuanaland for a go at the elephants, leading his automobile racing team to Nassau and Elkhart Lake, flying off to Jordan for a powwow with the king, galloping toward the goal on his polo pony or simply relaxing at home with his wife, Katsy, and his 15-month-old son, John III.

But he also has his inner doubts and frustrations, his angers and drives. There are problems that keep Little John lying awake at night, even as you and I and Ralph Kramden, and there are purposes and goals in his life, as well as setbacks and defeats that bedevil him. At the moment, for example, he is annoyed at General Motors and the Ford Motor Co., two organizations to which most of us can merely say, "Yes, sir," "No, sir," and "No excuse, sir." He is fighting them on all fronts and, as befits a man with $200 million behind him, he is not afraid to say so. He has his own miniature Viet Cong going against the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the Interior. He is tilting at certain sports car powers whom he accuses of sleazy, sneaky practices. And he is enraged at the slaughter of animals and species now taking place in the emerging nations of Africa. To all of these annoyances and angers he is bringing his prodigious bankroll and his equally prodigious energies. Thus he takes his place as a new type of rich young American: one who engages in conspicuous consumption and at the same time engages in conspicuous action.

Little John is, however, a businessman first. He knows where the money comes from, and he reckons his primary job is to make it. "He puts a good business deal together," says a longtime observer of the Mecoms. "Little John knows what trees make shingles." The family's original money came from John Sr., who borrowed $700 from his mother as a young man, put down an oil well and hit. With this well as a starter, and a solid geological education as a foundation, John Sr. began drilling on the outer edges of areas regarded as used up by other drillers. By going deeper (he has drilled to 22,570 feet, a world record), Mecom Sr. found producing wells where others had abandoned dry holes and moved on. Now he is one of the half dozen richest independent operators in the world.

From Little John's early teens, he has found himself a full partner in the family enterprises. At 15, he was the courier who carried a sackful of promissory notes and liens and title searches from New York to Louisiana and back to New York to consummate the 780,000-acre land purchase along the Gulf Coast. In one of his college years he made 18 Atlantic crossings, and nowadays he is likely to spend as much time out of the country as in it, working on deals in places like Beirut and Jerusalem. He does not suffer the classical rich boy's problem of feeling worthless and guilty over using his father's money; he has been too busy helping his father earn the money for the last 10 years. "There's never a business deal that goes on that Little John doesn't sit in on," says close associate Bill Smyth, "whether it's in Yemen or Afghanistan or wherever. This boy has been putting together international contracts since he was in high school."

The business pace of the clan Mecom may be seen in the fact that every Mecom airplane is refueled instantly when it lands; the Mecoms p�re et fils frequently land in a strange city, conduct their business in a few hours and then take off for another city and another deal before the pilot's lunch break is over. "When you work for Mecom," says Smyth, "you carry your toothbrush and your passport at all times."

Somehow Little John manages to find time and energy for sporting interests that would take the full attention of a lesser man. Three years ago he started an automobile racing team while hard-footed veteran racers stood around and guffawed; they had seen many another rich young man lose his tuxedo trying to put together a winner. A little over a year went by, and the Mecom Racing Team took its blue-and-white cars to Nassau's Speed Week and won the top three events, a feat never accomplished before. Mecom cars have since won such races as the Bridgehampton and Elkhart Lake 500s. Nowadays the Mecom team is regarded as one of the top three teams in the country, along with Carroll Shelby of Venice, Calif. (Cobra-Fords) and Jim Hall of Midland, Texas (Chevrolet-powered Chaparrals).

Little John's interest in speed dates back 10 years to the Chevrolet Corvette he owned when he was 15. He used to take it down to an abandoned blimp base in Hitchcock, Texas and open it up on the 4,000-foot runway, a practice which no one could complain about: the Mecoms owned the blimp base. When he was 20, Little John entered a few races and hill climbs and brought the wrath of the elder Mecom down on him. "I was racing Jaguar XK-150s," Little John recalls ruefully, "and a couple of people were banged up in one of the races. Of course, I've seen the same things happen playing polo and football. These are the chances you take in competition. Hell, the ceiling could fall in on us right now. But when my father found out and said nothing doing, I quit. That's all there was to it. I don't blame him." The paternal attitude was that Little John, as the only male heir (he has two sisters), was too valuable a commodity to risk being splattered all over a racecourse while trying to win a genuine simulated silver trophy worth $11.50.