"$700 a month, Bring Your Own Gun"

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

Thought some of you might find this amusing...
https://tinkertalksguns.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/700-a-month-bring-your-own-gun/

 

[armoredman]

YIKES!

 

[mstreddy]

Tinker, what, you didn't take the job? What?
Free room and board too!

BTW, I like your writing style.

 

[ilbob]

when we lived in Nebraska the town sheriff was a drunk that lived behind us. The town did not even have a police station, although there was an office at the town hall for the sheriff but he was almost never there as he spent most of his time drinking in the one bar in town.

The town did not have a police car. I think he hand painted the word sheriff on his personal vehicle and had some kind of light bar on the top. I used to see it in his driveway. I was maybe 8 at the time, and did not think it unusual that he spent all his time at the bar and had a hand painted police car. I don't recall seeing him in any recognizable uniform either.

 

[Hardtarget]

Thanks for shareing your story. You told it well! I do not blame you for ...moving on.

Mark

 

[Wisco]

That's like $1,700 a month now. Heck, I'd take that job just for kicks...for a weekend.

 

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

That's like $1,700 a month now. Heck, I'd take that job just for kicks...for a weekend.

That'd work- I suspect you might have gotten kicked a lot!

 

[RPRNY]

Well written. Huzzah!

 

[MedWheeler]

I had a sergeant that experienced something similar, in PA, I think. He'd gone up there on vacation and been offered the position. His, however, only offered a stipend of $50 a week, and he would have had had to supply his car as well as his gun (they would give him a blue dash light for the car.) This was around 1990.

My dad lived out in the high desert in New Mexico. One of the towns south of him, the town of Mountanair, was along a real bad drug-trade route (probably still is.) That town had a real hard time keeping lawmen, too. I met one of the ones that had tried the gig. Threats against them and their families by drug traffickers usually drove them off.

 

[bannockburn]

Tinker

Great story! I don't think even Barney Fife would have taken that job!

 

[jmr40]

I graduated from college in 1980, started working at just over $1000/month. But that didn't include room and board. Getting $700/month at that time wasn't terrible pay considering.

The town reminds me of a place where I stopped for gas in South Dakota about 20 years ago. There was 1 gas station, with only 1 pump, a few bars and a tiny grocery store across the street from the gas station. Which was ONLY a gas station. Nothing but farms for about 50 miles in either direction.