Walter

Back in the day, the day being the sixties and seventies, Twin Falls being a small town had pretty much whatever you needed at the local merchants, just less choice generally. We had a Sears and Kroger of course, they were everywhere like Wal-Mart is now. Usually the hardware store and lumber company would be locally owned as the big chains like Lowes and Home Depot hadn't taken so big a part of the market. Walmartization I call it, once Sam and his people figured out a system it was relatively easy to duplicate in other businesses. Unless you were clueless like K-Mart, or too slow-moving like Sears, or both like Radio Shack. Auto parts stores were locally owned but some were beginning to be affiliated with NAPA and the like. Clothing stores, we had a few, a couple of high-dollar ones for the rich folks not to have to go to Memphis for everything. Nothing like a McDonalds or other fast food - I believe the first ones were Pizza Hut and Sonic, both in the early to mid-seventies.

OK, so there were some local businessmen doing pretty good, one had a Western Auto franchise, another had an OTASCO (Oklahoma Tire and Supply) store, and of course the guys with big three auto dealerships did all right. GM had so many brands the town had two dealers, one Chevrolet and Oldsmobile and the other Buick and Pontiac. It was pretty easy money, having a lock on essential stuff even if you were sharing it with one of two other guys.

Western Auto was a real good deal in those days, and the fellow that owned the one in Twin Falls was a character. One of his kids, the oldest, was in the M section of my grade. Not a bad sort at all, probably if his daddy wasn't so warped he would have been all right but if would change a lot of things it it could. Wesley Garner was the old man, short and fat and loud and put on like he had more money than he did as it turned out. Actually the guys that had the money were pretty quiet types and you wouldn't generally know how much but if you found out you'd be surprised.

Wesley leased a new Cadillac every couple of years, and when Mike - his oldest kid - started driving it as soon as he got his license at sixteen. Like most kids our age he could be foolish but never killed anyone that I know of. Scared me enough I wouldn't ride with him any more. Mike didn't get a new car right away like Joey did. He had one by the time we graduated though, kind of a basic '73 Torino, monochrome paint job (another sign of a budget model) and didn't have duals. Joey had a Gran Torino, 351 Cleveland and of course duals, fancier paint and everything. Mike did put a set of Cragar SSs on and the car looked pretty good.

Mike was pretty well accepted into the regular society even if they made fun of him a lot because of his frequent faux pas. Like I said he was a decent enough kid, never did anything bad to me. But his old man was a piece of work. He and fellow businessman used to swap wives, and it didn't bother them to talk about it riding home from the country club in the back of a police car - on account of how the cops would go out to the club and drive them home so they wouldn't kill anyone.

We usually went to the football games, the home games anyway, and did'nt pay much attention to the game but socialized some more with the other kids. One night, guess I was a junior, I took this girl with me. Her older sister and one of my older sisters was pals and they fixed us up. Didn't develop into anything, don't remember why. Anyhow we were sitting down watching because that's what you do when you have a date, and we're on the front row where everybody walks by. Here comes Wesley. Two Wesleys. I look over at my girl... someone was with the two Wesleys, don't remember who, but he introduced us. To the other Wesley. Roger, Wesley's identical twin.

I'm thinking, please don't tell me there's two of them.

Walter wasn't a bad sort either, not like mean. Crooked as a sackfull of snakes but nothing unusual about that. Probably cheated the government more than anyone else, so much cash business back then. But times changed and the neat little socio-financial ecosystem didn't weather the changes well. Walmart was a big part of it, but the old businesses had had it too easy. OTASCO and Western Auto both went downhill fast. I suspect the OTASCO dude was pretty well fixed, saving money, investments. But Wesley was hand to mouth, just there had always been enough coming in to keep him going.

After I graduated from high school I decided instead of going to college to go to the nearby coummunty college at night. I could get an associates in accounting and finish later at MSU. The president of one of the banks knew Dad and told him if I wasn't going to college right away he would be interested in having me at the bank. Having left my job at Kroger a few weeks earlier and gone to work at the new Wal-Mart I decided the bank might be a good deal since I wanted to work in something accounting-related. So I went to work at First National Bank of Twin Falls. Didn't pay worth a damn but I figured I could eventually be a loan officer or something, unaware that they didn't get paid that much, but in that position they were exposed to various lucrative business opportunities.

Anyway I worked in the bookkeeping department for a year or so, filing checks and mailing bank statements and taking phone calls from customers, easy work, with the exception of the president, several officers and me it was mostly women. Some nice-looking ones too, mostly married but I learned that... let's talk about that later. The most popular nickname for the bank seemed to be Last Nasty. Later I worked as a teller - supposedly a promotion - and then worked in the loan department. I finished my two-year accounting degree and the bank didn't look like as good career-wise and I was twenty-one, so I decided to enlist in the Air Force. I'd talked to a couple of people that knew guys that did and so I went to see the recruiter over in Johnsonville and he did the paperwork and took me and a couple of other guys over to the induction center in Memphis, take tests all day, few days later got put on a plane to Texas for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base.

Four years later, four years and a couple of months anyway, I went back to work at the same bank but that's another story. I haven't actually digressed much as when I came back to Twin Falls it was about the way I left it. The bank was still there and so was Wesley Garner.

Wesley had just about always done business at the other bank - there were two banks and a savings and loan - and didn't do much business at Last Nasty. His spousal exchange partner (I don't know if there was more than one) did some business at both but I believe it was mostly at Last Nasty. His wife-swapping buddy was a pretty good businessman, had a couple of successful retail stores, but Western Auto was either already gone or on its last legs by then. Roland Spencer - might as well give his name since I'm gonna talk about him - and Wesley did some businesses together and when Roland decided to get into the mobile home business he and Wesley went in together and set up a lot and brought in some mobile homes. The manufacturer didn't get paid up front, at least not the full price. As they were sold the manufacturer got paid off.

It was about this time that Wesley started doing business at Last Nasty all of a sudden. Came in gladhanding everybody that didn't evade him. Said he need to be spreading his money around. We all knew better but, most of us anyway.

Most people who buy mobile homes can't pay up front either, so they get a bank to finance it, kind of like a car. Only back then a car loan was three years and a mobile home was ten or more, a mortgage on a modest house was typicaly twenty years. Those were the days. I bought a mobile home, cash up front about a year ago, put it in a quiet little place on the east side of a low line of hills. Forty acres of mostly woods and the tornadoes come in from the west and in sixty years I've never seen one on the ground within fifteen miles of so of the east side of the ridge. They hit the west side pretty regular. But I sense a digression, tell you about that another time.

Mobile home dealers in this situation do what used car dealers did then. They'd sign the loan as a guarantee it would be paid if the buyer defaulted. At the bank we had our own computer system - something few small banks did. Our system was pretty advanced software-wise for the day, and you could all kinds of custom reports. That's why I went back to work there, it was 1982 and personal computers were new and still pretty expensive. I had a near million dollar mainframe to play with. Anyway one of the reports I made kept track of those endorsed loans, which loan officer they belonged to, delinquency status, all that stuff. Got reviewed by the board of directors every week.

So pretty soon Ronald and Wesley were on the hook for some serious money, and the bank regulators would be looking sideways at the bank. As in stop making those loans for those buys. Ronald decided to sell out and leave it to Wesley. Whatever the deal was I don't know, probably Wesley was to pay him for his share later since he didn't have any money. Ronald got off the hook for any future loans and that was what mattered. Wesley kept on selling, but he wasn't paying the manufacturer. And they wouldn't deliver any more and wanted their money for the ones he'd sold.

That was the end for Wesley. The Western Auto store was gone, now the mobile home business was done. He left town, left the wife (kids were grown) in a house about to be repossessed. I don't remember if anyone was looking to prosecute him, the mobile home manufacturer probably wanted to, don't know about the bank. Anyway at the bank they were trying to track down all the mobile homes he'd sold. Some of them may have been in parks and easily found but others were somewhere out in the country. Lost a good bit of money on that one as there are a lot of defaults on mobile homes.

Out of curiosity I goggled Wesley. Seems he died a few years back at 83. Another fellow I know, won't digress on him just now, is every bit as crooked and possibly dumber - it's a close call - is still kickin' at 88 was I write this. Roland is 93, if Wesley was extant he'd be right at a hundred.

Most of my life I've seen people do bad things and never have to pay up, even stuff that was illegal in a serious way, and not necessarily 'victimless' like cheating on taxes. I mean immoral stuff, and hurting other people. Not that I haven't done plenty of illegal stuff, but didn't hurt people. That's not nice. Anyway I wonder what they think about at the end, with the darkness closing in. A lot of them were religious in the social sense, being in a church is part of your social status, or was in those days. It would seem that what they heard in church didn't much affect their behavior, so when the end is approaching do they have any regrets? Depends on what they believed about the afterlife I suppose.

Okey-dokey, that's all for Wesley.

The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. Psalm 103:15-16