One of the joys of living in a small town is that you get to do and experience things that would never be available in a large city. 

Now, I’m not thinking of the cultural and entertainment choices a city has to offer.  If I want those, it’s just a short drive and I get to be thankful coming home that I don’t have that traffic to deal with every day. 

Growing up, I dreamed of being a fireman, cowboy or a mechanic.  The fireman gets to help people in bad situations, and it is an exciting dangerous job. The cowboy is able to work out on his own with nature as his desk and his trusty horse as his cubical.  The mechanic is paid to fix things and gets dirty doing it. 

As a child, these were my visions of ideal occupations.

As time progressed, the ideas seemed to fade away, especially when my job required me to live in the city.  During that part of my life, commuting would easily eat so much time that a recliner and cold drink would be all I would want at day's end.

Moving back to a small town changed everything. 

Rural areas have the same occupational needs and jobs as do their larger counterparts.  These places just must be creative as to how they fill those needs.  Which brings me to my story. 

I’ve been a volunteer fireman on the Mt. Pleasant/Altamont department for the past 27 years. 

My involvement came by accident.  Keith Shaffer, a senior vice president at the bank, and I were walking down Main Street when the fire whistle blew.   No one responded and it sounded again.  We happened to be close to City Hall and were told the high school had a fire, and all the city workers were at the lake fixing a water leak. 

Keith and I opened the door at the station got in the truck and drove to the fire, all the while broadcasting on the radio that we could get the truck to the fire but had no idea as to how to make it pump water.

Later that day we were appointed by the city to become firemen. He is now the fire chief and I get to drive the fire truck.

Last Saturday we responded to a house fire in our town.  A typical unsafe electric space heater, like the millions sold at the big box stores, started the fire.  While we were wrapping up after the fire and rolling hose, a fellow fireman asked me, “Why is the government giving all this money away to banks?"

I told him our bank wasn’t any part of that fiasco and never would be. 

He asked, “But aren’t those hot shot New York bankers the same people that talked everyone into all that debt and also keep sending me and everyone else those pre-approved credit cards? Hell, the government can’t even protect the public from being sold a junk space heater, and now they want me to think they can fix a junk bank.” Jeff was mad. 

I live in the country just three minutes from town, if I’m driving the Challenger. I raise cattle, so I’m a cowboy.  It’s wonderful in the country - open spaces with nature at your fingertips.

This week I had a cow break a leg.  I wanted to see if anything could be done to help her so I called the vet.  Just as I thought, it was bad and nothing could be done. 

Then the vet asked, “Just why are feds so stupid that they are pouring good money into soon to be dead banks?  This is the same thing as you wanting me to save this cow.  I can spend a bunch of your money trying, but the end result will still be a dead cow.” 

I love to work on old tractors. They are so old that they have magnetos instead of batteries. That must make me old school. The bank has a repossessed van that wouldn’t run. Generally speaking, vehicles that borrowers don’t pay for are not in good shape. It had several things wrong with it, and these are way beyond my mechanical repair abilities. A bank customer runs an auto repair and body shop. I told Brian, the owner of the shop, to diagnose the problems and tell me what it was going to cost because I wasn’t going to spend more that half of the repaired value trying to get it fixed. It didn’t turn out to be too expensive, so he fixed it. 

Brian said to me, “How come the people in Washington don’t look at what they are wasting my money on before they spend more on a company than it’s worth? If my business was run that way, I’d be out of business.” He was mad at his tax money being spent to fix something that couldn’t be fixed.  

To many, I must sound like a broken record as I preach just how bad TARP is for this country and our future.  But what I thought were just my concerns turn out to be what everyone else is thinking after all. Now we find political favors have also been handed out in the nature of pressuring for the release of TARP money to “save” insolvent banks and other firms.  I bet that really surprised everyone, not. 

Hopefully a new administration will stop this nonsense once and for all.  I’m probably just dreaming. But then again I did get to become a fireman, cowboy and mechanic, so dreams can come true.

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Kansas Liberty columnist Bill Wyckoff is president of Labette Bank, a community bank with locations throughout southeast Kansas. He lives on a farm outside Altamont, Kan. A graduate of Kansas State University with an MBA from Southern Illinois University, he enjoys collecting antique John Deere tractors and driving his hemi orange Dodge Challenger. Email bwyckoff@labettebank.com

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