Jackson Free Press

Sitting at the round corner table at Hal & Mal's—his team's Pub Quiz table—I realized that with young men like Earl Fyke IV around, there's reason to hope. This 24-year-old Jackson Prep graduate represents well the gamut of multi-talented 20-somethings, male and female—those grounded in the here and now and, thankfully, still here right now—who will eventually reshape and remake Jackson.

After three months at Ole Miss, Fyke came home in 1998, telling his family he needed a break from school. He's still wrestling with when and if, and maybe even where, to return to school while he runs his successful business.

West End Enterprises is the evolutional result of Fyke's natural curiosity and an innate ability to sell. And there's a familial connection with his great-grandfather Earl Fyke, developer of Mississippi's first shopping center, Westland Plaza, whose business was West End Development. But Fyke IV didn't know that until he showed his card to his folks, telling them he'd named the business for his one-time working and living space, at the west end of Capitol Street—the now-defunct Living Room coffeehouse and its apartment.

Fyke started successfully selling in elementary school, stuff like Jackson Mets' tickets. "I won a trip to New York to see the Mets play when I was 12, maybe," Fyke told me. Today, he sells restaurant equipment, shipping to every state and Canada. "Some of these Hobart dough mixers weigh over 1,000 pounds," he added. A shipping broker's Internet-based software allows him to find the 18-wheeler with the best quote.

His curiosity about government surplus auctions led Fyke from his first buy, an art gallery liquidation, to his first pallet bought at a Mississippi Department of Surplus auction through four mini-storage units to a 6,000 square-foot warehouse, complete with forklifts. All the while, he worked as an art and commercial photographer and a production assistant on projects like Mississippian Tom Rice's movie "The Rising Place" and TV's "Trading Spaces."

West End Enterprises, mainly eBay-based, physically takes him from auction to auction. "My job is like a treasure hunt—I'm always out there looking for a good deal, whatever I can buy and sell … it's one big shopping spree, too." And he's met others across the country who feel the same way—friends now—a unique sub-culture nicknamed the Mixer Mafia. In time, he has found this adage to be true: You don't make it at the sell, you make it at the buy.