At the beginning of every October, I drive out to my Uncle Fud's Chigger Mountain Farm to buy some pumpkins to decorate the front steps of our condo in Utopia by Bosky Dell.
Imagine my surprise when I found the roadside pumpkin stand closed and Uncle Fud sitting glumly on the front porch of his house.
"Where are the pumpkins?" I asked.
"Out in the field," Uncle Fud said. "We got so much rain this summer that most of 'em rotted on the ground."
"That must be a severe blow to your budget," I said.
"It's a swift kick in the pants," he said. "That's why I asked the bank for a bailout."
"You asked for a bailout from the bank?" I asked.
"Yep, that's what I did," Uncle Fud said. "I went into the Scratch County Peoples Bank and told the lady that my punkin crop had failed, my thistle seed crop was et up by a swarm of goldfinches and yer Aunt Dud lost her part-time job at the school lunchroom on account of a budget cut."
"What did the lady at the bank say?" I asked.
"She said she couldn't give me a loan," he said. "And I said I didn't want a loan, I wanted a bailout. Then she said she didn't understand."
"So, what did you tell her?" I asked.
"I told her I wanted the same deal that those people I read about in the newspaper got," Uncle Fud. "You know, people like that Fannie Mae woman, that Freddie Mac fella and the Bear Stearns guy."
"What did she say to that?" I asked.
"She said that those people are mortgage lendin' giants, banks and insurance companies and the bailout they got was essential to the American economy," he said. "So I told her that the bailout I wanted was essential to my family's economy."
"Did that get you anywhere?" I asked.
Not so's you'd notice," Uncle Fud said. "She said that without the help those guys got, there would have been a disaster on Wall Street and at the Fortune 500 companies. So I said that without the help I need, there'll be a disaster in Chigger Mountain."
"Did that persuade her?" I asked.
"Nope," he said. "She said the situation was different. She said that because I wasn't irresponsible with billions of dollars and they were irresponsible with billions of dollars, they had to be given billions of dollars more."
"How's that again?" I asked.
"My question, exactly," Uncle Fud said. "Her answer was that it doesn't make any sense, but that's how high finance works. So I gave up on the bailout request and tried somethin' different. I asked her to give me my money."
"What money was that?" I asked.
"Her question, exactly," he said. "What I wanted was my share of the cash bein' used to bailout Fannie, Freddie and the rest of the Socialism-is-Better-Than-Capitalism-When-I'm-Losin'-My-Shirt crowd."
"How much would that be?" I asked.
"I read where the $700 billion bailout is goin' to cost every American household about $6,000," Uncle Fud said. "And the national debt costs every American about $67,000. I figure that me and yer Aunt Dud are due $134,000 on the national debt and $6,000 on the bailout, so I asked the bank lady to give us $140,000 and we'd call it even."
"Did she hand you a check?" I asked.
"She showed me the door," he said. "I asked her if she'd do for me what was done for Fannie Mae if I could prove mother's name was Annie Mae, and she said no."
"I would have guessed that," I said.
"Then I asked how about me gettin' the same deal as Freddie Mac if I did an impersonation of Bernie Mac, God rest his soul," Uncle Fud said. "And she said no."
"So there will be no bailout?" I asked.
"Actually, there will be one bailout," he said.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I'm goin' to bail out of farmin' and go into business throwin' away big piles of other people's money," said Uncle Fud.
Glenn Ickler, a former newspaper editor, lives in Hopedale.
