Postcards
Caught red handed
In August, a Winder, Ga., officer responded to an alarm from the vault of a closed bank and discovered a city councilman with “bait money” that had exploded in his pocket as he tried to leave the building. “He like to blowed his britches off in front of a police lieutenant and a maintenance man,” Mayor Lamar “Buddy” Ouzts told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. According to the newspaper, the city had bought the building and planned to move City Hall into it, so 81-year-old Charles Haymon had a right to be in it, but he was charged with misdemeanor theft for taking two dye-stained $10 bills and a nickel.
Little town blues
For $3 million, the owner of Otis, Ore., is willing to sell the 190-acre town, which includes a restaurant, gas station, corn dog shack, two homes and a barn. According to Reuters, owner Vivian Lematta, 83, has grown tired of running the town and is trying to sell it for the second time in five years. “It’s a burden,” she told Reuters. “The government has come in there and made all these new rules, and it just isn’t as much fun as it used to be.” Lematta inherited the town from her grandfather, who bought it a few years before she was born for $5,000.