Four months after his daughter’s death he suddenly sold all his holdings for a six-hundred-thousand-dollar promissary note, then had a bank discount it for cash. He was leaving the oil game, he told Lyda. With the money in hand, Hunt announced he was taking an extended trip—alone—to Florida. He said he was thinking of investing in the state’s postwar real estate boom, and maybe he believed it. But it wasn’t real estate he was looking for, as an operetta he began composing on the train to Tampa suggests. He called it, “Whenever Dreams Come True, I’ll Be with You.” “Up to the time I met you,” he
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