Chapter 46

The rest of the week I did almost nothing. I took a quick course in growing Bamboo from seeds. For the first installment I went to the home depot ‘expert’. From her I drove directly to the Lowe’s store to take the course from the lady there. I combined several bits of information from both to come up with my plan.

At 2PM on Friday we closed the sale on the three acres of land. By that time I was exhausted. Rufus took his money and headed out to the bank. Whether it was to deposit it, or to cash the check, I really didn’t care.

I gave John $1,300 in cash from the storage locker. I had thought about moving the money to the bottom of one of my worm beds. I would be closer to it, but it would be even harder to get to it there. So I drove to the small storage locker in Jackson before the meeting. I had moved my gun safe, and the stash there the year before. I also had room for some other things. For instance I had my collection of old case files. I had no desire to look through them at the moment, but who knows I might write a book one day. This journal will be good practice for that, I thought.

Since I collected two grand in cash on Thursday, I had it over night at the house. It didn’t concern me, but it was something I needed to think about. I was glad to be shed of most of it Friday afternoon. The extra cash I could work into much weakened band account. I could concentrate on adding a couple of hundred bucks to the bank every month, and call it profit from my worm business.

After the closing on Friday afternoon, I went to the bank where I had all my accounts. For the first time in years I went to speak to a loan officer. The bank was about to close when we finished our business. He looked over the information I gave him before he said anything.

“Mr. Rollins, I see no reason why we can’t give you an eight year mortgage. The payments on that would be under a hundred a month. Since you are agreeable to a direct transfer, there should no problem approving it,” he said.

I nodded my head and left the bank. It was all part of the very simple shell game. The state government’s retirement payment was deposited in the bank before it removed the money from that account. Then I added a few hundred here and there from the worm business, or from the stash. If I had a really good worm month, I spent most of the money on things I wanted to buy. Luxuries like food, utilities and clothing. I also did work on the cabin, like the potting shed I was making plans to buy or build. Yes, I was already making plans for it.

Maurine and I were planning to have dinner on Friday night. Lucinda’s MMA matches were Maurine’s new idea of a fun evening. We did stop at a small Italian restaurant before we drove to the gym. As the price of admission, I carried a complete cheese cake for Lucinda and Gerome. I also brought a half gallon of coffee in my Ozark stainless steel thermos. I would have shared that as well, but Lucinda had a large pot of bad coffee for the gym patrons. That meant Maurine and I drank most of the coffee. We drank from heavy duty insulated plastic cups while we watched the blood fly.

The matches ended in about two hours. Maurine and I placed a twenty dollar bet on a Latino fighter name Martinez the terminator. He lost of course. Since the money went to the winner of the match, I didn’t mind. It was a not for profit operation, with the bets being held by Lucinda. If any law dogs looked at it she was absolutely clean.