Chapter 27

I was having a quiet cuppa with Billy one day when he reached under his desk and drew out an old car magazine. "Old Bill never chucked anything away Jimmy, this is a 1930 car magazine and it has a write up on the Marquette.

Your model is a 43X, it was the last one with the wooden spoke wheels, the next model had the wire wheels. It has four wheel mechanical brakes, a six cylinder motor with side valves, the little door on the side is for the owner to put his golf clubs and there is the full length glove box behind the seat, exactly like yours mate" And there was a picture of my pride and joy, even down to the same colour.

"Wow, thanks Billy"

I carefully stowed the informative magazine in my bag. We continued to discuss the garage and how it was running, Sally brought us in another cuppa and stopped to chat, I asked her how the baby was going and she told me that she could feel it moving, Billy was as proud as a peacock.

The discussion moved on to the agricultural side of the garage business, "the trouble is Jimmy, the local farmers want to buy equipment but most of their money is in the ground, when the crops come in then they can pay, the thing is, can we carry them until they are solvent?"

"That's a good point Sally; I think it is something I should talk to Ron about, he would have a better idea than me about that sort of thing."

As I was leaving I asked them if they knew that Jenny's birthday was coming up in a few weeks, they said that Jessica had sent them an invite to the party and they would definitely be there.

On the way back to the store I dropped in to see Ron, "Sally tells me that the farmers want to buy equipment but most of their money is tied up in crops, is there anyway we can finance them without over extending ourselves?"

"The financing isn't so much of a problem Jimmy, but I've been thinking about an idea I read about. In Canada communities are starting up credit unions, without the large payments to the investors that keep the banks viable they can offer better terms and services. One very good idea they have is a budget account, the member calculates his outgoings for the year and adds ten percent, this is then divided by fifty two and that is the amount paid into the account each week. When a bill becomes due the member makes a withdrawal and pays the bill."

"What happens if there isn't enough money in the account Ron?"

"That's the beauty of the whole thing Jimmy, for the first year you could be in and out of credit, the union still meets the payment, by the second year that ten percent you added to your payment brings you into full credit."

"So how do we go about starting something like that around here then?"

"Well first I intend to contact these folk in Canada and get as much information out of them as I can. Then I think we should get a few of our local organisations interested, after that if we think we can float it we would call a public meeting to see if there is enough interest in going ahead."