Bankrupt

I saw on the news yesterday where this US city went bankrupt. A whole city. I have only known one person who went bankrupt. He was a little man who ran a news stand in Harper for a few years. He was thought of as being very successful. He had a young, beautiful wife, always drove a new Cadillac, lived in a big house with lots of hired help, and flashed a rolls of bills (always with a hundred dollar bill on top.) One day all this was gone. We found out he owed thousands of dollars and had nothing in the bank. Most people around here don't live like that. One rule my daddy always stressed: Live beneath your means. If I heard him say that once I heard him say it a million times. One funny example of this is this old farmer, Nelson Halferson. To look at him you'd have thought he was poor as a church mouse. But that wasn't the case. He didn't spend money, didn't have to. He was pretty much self-sufficient and raised all his own food. Tomorrow I'll tell you a little story about him finally deciding to get a new car.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle