Dateline Normal, Mn.: "There are NO jails in Normal, Mn."----FICTION

Well we are in the budget season. After a long Saturday of listening, listening, and listening to departments that were calmly planning on spending more money next year for projects designed to edify my lifestyle, I just needed a getaway----so after loading the video and audio, I headed the car up that long and lonely road to Normal, Mn., up Hwy 10 north of the Twin Cities, just south of Garrison to my favorite fishing spot.

After making sure that there was a room at the Spruce Goose Motel, the only motel in town with a 30 point buck on each wall, I headed over to the Hideaway Lounge---where they were having an "Over 35 male fisherman night" where all the drinks were half price, and the ladies had to pay full price. Every year there was just one night that men had the special price, and I got there for the occasion. It was special.

Anyway, I quickly found my old friend, Herman, the countryboy lawyer, and after ordering a double manhatten, with the special whiskey, I just blurted it out to Herman:

"Herman, how do deal with the budget up here in Normal, Mn. It seems like the cost of everything, food, utilities, gas, travel, etc is just skyrocketing. For cities, it seems that the costs of administration is high too, and the costs of municipal courts and police are rising too. How do you deal with it?"

Herman let out a huge belly laugh: "It's real simple, Wolfman( that's what he always called me.). It is all the inner secrets of the accounting categories. Up here we just use CONSOLIDATED ACCOUNTING."

"What do you mean,?" I asked.

"It's real simple, Wolfman" we merged the jail expense with the municipal court. That way, if a guy goes to jail, it comes out of the salary of the court staff. Shucks. We haven't had a person jailed in years. It just works wonders."

"Something about that does not sound right", I retorted. Isn't that conflict of interest?"

Herman replied, "Nope. It's just normal here."

Then Herman went on: " We also combined the police automotive expense with the salary expense ---there is just one CONSOLIDATED category. That way, the bigger the cars the police drive, the more it comes out of their salary---It has worked WONDERS. We used to have all SUV's here. Nowdays, our police chief rides a moped."

WoW. I never had heard about CONSOLIDATED accounting. Sounded pretty odd to me. Still. I could just see our police staff riding mopeds.

It sure is good to be back in good old Wisconsin. Where we have separate categories for stuff. Where folks occasionally do go to jail. And where mopeds might not work.

It sure is good to be back home.