Last Morgan family Realtor hanging up license

For 86 years there has been at least one member of the Morgan family selling real estate in Portales, but come Monday, that will no longer be true.

Hubert Morgan, Jr. — known to many as “Scoot” — holds the last family license and it expires at the end of the month.

“I’m done,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it. I’m not tired of it. I just can’t keep up.”

Morgan, who turned 80 in September, said he didn’t grow up intending to be a Realtor, but he’d been around it all of his life.

His grandfather, M.C. Morgan, came to Portales in 1936 with 10 years of Realty experience already under his belt and opened an office on Main Street. Eleven years later, Hubert’s father — Hubert Morgan, Sr., but known as “Shorty” — joined the family business when his namesake son was 5.

Young Hubert said by the time he was 6 years old, he was sweeping out his granddad’s real estate office, and shining shoes next door in his uncle Babe Morgan’s barbershop.

At one time, Hubert said, not only his grandfather, but his dad and all of his uncles had real estate licenses, including Babe the barber.

Life was a little simpler back then in so many ways.

Hubert said when his grandfather set up shop in Portales, only a handful of other people sold real estate here, and it was a profession that didn’t require any particular training.

In fact, he well remembers as a kid when his grandfather popped into the barbershop to see if his haircutting uncle would be interested in selling some real estate on the side.

“I was shining shoes for Uncle Babe when my granddad came in and said, ‘Babe, do you want your real estate license?’ It’s $5 to be a salesman or $10 to be a broker,’” Hubert recalled. “Babe pulled out a five-dollar bill and said, ‘I’ll be a salesman.’ You didn’t even have to take a test back then.”

Hubert’s father, trained as a carpenter in his Navy Seabee days in World War II, used his carpentry skills to build a home for his family in Portales in 1955. A few years later, he built the nearby office on South Avenue D that has housed Morgan Realty since 1961.

The office walls are lined with family photos and memorabilia, including that original wooden sign from M.C. Morgan and Sons Realty.

Hubert Morgan has nothing but fond memories of growing up in Portales.

“There were kids all over the place,” Morgan said. “We played hide and seek and kick the can and red rover. We had sewing clubs and put on plays in the garage.

“My mom had a whistle, and she would get out on the porch and whistle,” he said. “We knew when the whistle went off, it was time to go home. Then Portales put in streetlights. When those lights came on, it was time to go home.”

Hubert graduated from Portales High School in 1961 and spent his first adult working years selling life insurance, but by 1972 he got his own real estate license and officially joined the family business.

A half century later, it’s just not as much fun as it once was.

“There’s getting to be so many rules and regulations,” he said. “It’s just too much for me anymore.”

He remembers watching his grandfather seal a deal with little more than a handshake, and his own first years in Realty when he could flip over an earnest money check and write terms and conditions on the back of it.

“Now there are 21 pages in a contract,” Hubert said, “and that’s if there are no addendums or amendments. The forms change all the time … it sometimes seems like almost overnight.”

In a community filled with properties he has sold — “some of them two or three times” — the gregarious Hubert Morgan said he knows a lot of people, although “every once in a while, I run into someone I don’t know.”

He plans to stay in Portales — he still lives behind the real estate office in the home his father built — and he’s lined up to get a knee replacement soon, which he hopes will allow him to get back on the golf course.

What was the most satisfying part of 50 years of selling property?

“Finding a home for a family that really, really, really liked it,” he said, with his voice cracking, “a place they wanted to live.”

Betty Williamson misses those “sealed with a handshake” days. Reach her at:

[email protected]