It's this family-friendliness that led Blank to buy the ranch in 2002, several years after he first visited with his wife and their 2-year-old son.

FORBES: True West

His father was a door-to-door salesman of household items like dishes and blankets and, eventually, saved enough to buy a ranch house in the working-class community of Warwick, Rhode Island.

NEWYORKER: Critical Mass

He often went to buy tools with which to repair the ranch house, but he also passed the time of day chatting with the gardener, or with the keepers of the general store and the hardware store, whose livelihoods he diminished day by day, as he lengthened the accounts he had with each of them.

NEWYORKER: The Insufferable Gaucho

Amid the slowest ranch market in the last 30 years, now is a good time to buy (and not, of course, a good time for Bervy to sell either of the remaining properties).

FORBES: Life

"Once I earn enough money to buy a ranch, I'll probably quit then, " said the former LSU golfer and native of Fort Worth, Texas.

WSJ: Jerry Kelly and Chris DiMarco, Grinding It Out on the PGA Tour | Golf Journal by John Paul Newport

To researchers, the pursuit of happiness--the decision to buy a Jeep Cherokee over a Chevy station wagon, a Cape Cod house versus a ranch, to chain ourselves to our desks and grind ourselves into wafers--emanates from the most important question human beings can ask themselves: What really makes us happy?

FORBES: Money, Happiness And The Pursuit Of Both