Jerry

It has probably always been the case that people who don't earn what they have don't appreciate as much as the ones who did. Even though Mom and Dad didn't spoil us - we were disciplined from birth be the good hard-working productive (mostly) law-abiding citizens we became. They could have bought us new cars but we had to get a job and pay for a used car. The extent of my social advantage was Dad knowing the president of a local bank from way back and him giving me an opportunity that I still had to prove I was worth.

I don't know if Jerry's parents were strict or not. His father was the elementary school principal and was pretty stern but for all I know he could have been like a lot of preachers are. Some of the worst kids I knew were children of church pastors. But some kids seem good growing up but when they're grown and away from the parents they give in fast to the temptations. I was considered an angel by my parents and all their family and friends and... OK, another time.

Jerry had a sister, the usual two or three years age separation. He was he older, just a few years older than me. When I went to work at the bank he had already been through college and was working as the assistant trust officer. He seemed a decent sort, talked big more than some of the other officers but it was mostly just talk. He had married a young woman who was the daughter of a seriously rich dude, owned a lot of land, had a horse farm, stables, big old plantation house. And a small bank in a nearby town. Really small but even a small bank was worth quite a bit. The banker's daughter was nowhere near to being attractive. Not ugly but just not much to look at as they say. But some also say that you can marry more money in an afternoon than you can earn in a lifetime.

Jerry wasn't a bad-looking guy, not that I look at members of my sex with that in mind but he looked the way women like men to look. I wouldn't mind looking that good. He could have any number of attractive women even if he didn't have money - being a school principal's son in the 1970s wasn't that lucrative - but one thing I found about Jerry was that he liked money. Liked it a lot, or liked what he could buy with it. If he really liked money he would have held on to it a little tighter. But he didn't have to work for it, just ask father-in-law.

Just a quick note - Jerry's father-in-law had a daughter who married Jerry's sister. Once she was through law school she dumped him. Married another guy or two, eventually became a judge of some sort somewhere. She wasn't half bad looking, the guy she married (Jerry's wife's sister) looked worse than his sister. But the bank accounts looked real good.

Anyway Jerry was pretty cocky, and why not? They had a big house up on Cedar Ridge, at that time the most exclusive neighborhood. Was at a couple of parties there at his and a couple of other houses owned by bigwigs. He and I made a few day trips on some bank business or other, and the only thing I remember about them is drinking. Once the business was done the next stop would be the liquor store. He'd drive around and we'd have a couple of beers before going back to the bank just before closing. That was generally the case when I went anywhere with one of the officers. They all drank a lot.

Jerry liked women as much as he did booze, maybe more. Not his wife, although they did have a kid or two, I forget. Father-in-law would want grandchildren. But he was probably something of a sex addict, sometimes multiple partners in the same day. Strangely the only bank employee I knew of him doing was a woman who worked in the trust department, just past thirty. Decent, excellent body, face so-so. Like Jerry's wife not ugly but not something to excite you.

Should I go ahead and confess that I can vouch for their performance? Might as well. Only a couple or three times with her, same with Bill's secretary Kay. And once with both at the same time. OK? I was after the younger ones, my age and under. And there were plenty of those, at the bank and around town.

Anyway he banged her regularly, probably a convenience thing for both. She had other guys, like Kay her husband was the one guy she wasn't doing it with, and Jerry had plenty of other women.

I went off the do my brief military career and returned to find that Jerry had left the bank. He and another guy had gotten a Radio Shack franchise and opened up a store, about what you'd expect in a town that size. The most popular items and whatever they were required to carry, and they'd order anything you wanted from the catalog. Radio Shack was nearing its peak then, the fall would come a few years later when the suits blew it big time. Like the suits just about everywhere else but I hated to see Radio Shack, with so much potential and perfectly positioned, screw the pooch six ways from Sunday.

Jerry seemed determined to prove that no business was idiot-proof. The CB radio craze hit about that time and lasted longer than Jerry's operation of a Radio Shack store did. Even without CB sales and in a small town a Shack could be profitable. In fact the one in Twin Falls didn't close until after the parent company went bankrupt twenty or so years later.

Jerry and his partner hired a manager who was the husband of one of the secretaries at the bank who was banging her loan officer boss. He drank a lot, whether because of the wife or other reasons. Seemed a decent fellow and was usually in the store when I went in. If giving away merchandise beyond a survivable loss was decent. And the kids he hired probably did their part. The store lost money for a couple of years and they sold it. It did reasonably well afterwards.

I suppose some people can screw up anything, but some things are generally more unscrewable than a Radio Shack or McDonalds. Like liquor stores. A little later Jerry and a different partner opened a liquor store. Now most liquor stores in that town were and still are in rather off the beaten path, partly because some of the patrons prefer to be less visible when they visit. Especially in a small town.

Did I mention that my family was of the small country Baptist church variety? Small, everybody knows everything about everybody. We didn't drink, smoke, cuss, shoot pool, play cards or dance. I'd hear Mom and dad talking sometimes about someone and say something like 'I hear he drinks' or 'she runs around on her husband' and I figured there were maybe just a handful of bad people that drank adult beverages or committed adultery. I grew up and learned there were damn few who didn't.

Jerry had to be a big shot and opened a big fancy store on the main drag, Longbranch Liquor. You had to get a license from the state to sell liquor. Beer permits were fairly easy, the convenience stores and even grocery stores had those. I believe at that time there were restrictions on how close to a church beer could be sold - one time someone built a new store and couldn't get a permit because there was a church too close. If the local residents objected they could cause problems - one time some folks built a new liquor store out on a highway about four or five miles from town and the residents of the area got a petition to the state liquor regulators to deny them a permit. They eventually got it but the business didn't prosper and eventually failed.

No such problem in Twin Falls but liquor permits were valuable and some money had to change hands, and some of those hands were in Little Rock. Jerry was connected, father-in-law was tight with the governor, but still an application of cash was needed. Guess where the money came from. So they got the store open, big and well-stocked, pretty well whatever you wanted was there or they'd get it. The location may have been prestigous but high-visibility probably discouraged some potential patrons. And like the Radio Shack he wasn't a hands-on manager. So the employees stole him blind fast. It lasted a year at best and when it closed it stayed that way.

Probably both businesses could have survived with competent management. Father-in-law still had money but not enough to continue indefinitely. Jerry tried the insurance business next. How can you lose money in insurance? It wasn't being an agent for one of the big companies like State Farm, he was an independent. Mainly sold a few big policies to a few customers, mostly businesses or rich people with big and complicated businesses. That at least was a business where it wasn't easy for employees to pocket cash and he had to be at least somewhat involved.

Employees may not have been paying themselves extra but the owner could. Jerry couldn't stop drinking and whoring and was in financial trouble soon enough. I figured him for a reasonably intelligent person. Not supersmart like some people I know but as smart as the average business people and most of those did all right.

If he'd been halfway smart he wouldn't have done what another guy in the same business had done a couple of years earlier. He had company like Jerry's and sold policies to some local businesses. Generally when they paid the premiums they didn't mail a check somewhere, they went to the office and wrote a check. Big checks, thousands of dollars. This fellow got in a pinch (gambling mainly but drinking usually goes along with that, and often whoring) and he put one or more of those checks in his personal account and didn't pay the insurance company. The customer's business burned, a good-sized retail establishment, over a million loss even in those days. Owner files a claim and insurance company says their policy lapsed some time ago.

Customer wants to know what happened to the premium payment. Easy enough to track. He was prosecuted and eventually spent some time in prison. Jerry knew about it, everyone in town knew about it. Jerry went and did the same thing.

The other fellow was from a good family, wealthy farmers, he was kind of the black sheep. They'd tried to help him a few times but weren't able or willing to get him off the hook. Jerry's father-in-law wasn't about to had his son-in-law to to prison so he bought him off one more time on the condition he leave town after a divorce. That cost him money he could ill afford but it got Jerry out of his life for good. He moved to Little Rock and worked for a politician or two. Maybe at some point it's too late to get an honest job. When is it too late to stop drinking and whoring? I could tell you about one fellow... maybe later.

Jerry's father-in-law's son wasn't any better at running a business than Jerry was. The bank deregulation of a few years earlier allowed his little bank of Red Springs (population about 600) to build a branch in Twin Falls and grow the business. I left Last Nasty about that time and while deciding on my next move took a job with his bank. They were preparing to bring their data processing as they called it then as it was called then in-house and I helped them evaluate several systems. One was the company I was talking to about going to work for, but they selected a decent but inferior system. That done I moved off to Jonesboro and paid less attention to Twin Falls. I still had property there and some fairly close friends but was pretty busy with my new job. The bank of Red Springs lasted two or three years and was sold to a larger bank. Last I heard Jerry's former brother-in-law was selling real estate.