ISBN 1-888725-65 The Gift of the Magic-and other enchanting character-building stories for smart teenage girls who want to grow up to be strong women. Richard Showstack, (2004) MacroPrintBooks™ edition 16 pt, 8¼X6½, 280 pp, $24.95
ISBN 1-888725-66-4. A Horse Named Peggy-and other enchanting character-building stories for smart teenage boys who want to grow up to be good men. Richard Showstack, (2004) ) 5½ X8¼, 145 pp, $14.95
<ISBN 1-888725-67, 8¼X6½, A Horse Named Peggy-and other enchanting character-building stories for smart teenage boys who want to grow up to be good men. Richard Showstack, (2004) MacroPrintBooks™ edition 16 pt, 280 pp, $24.95
James Johnson only had one bullet in his gun, so he wanted to make sure he used it well.
It was a warm summer evening, and James was walking down the main street of Wrightville, Indiana. The pleasant Mid-Western city of nearly 30,000 inhabitants was the kind of small town that America was built on and that all too rarely exists anymore. It was large enough to allow employment opportunities for the young people yet small enough so that it seemed like everyone knew everyone else.
The main street of Wrightville was a popular place to shop, to go on a date, or just to stroll on warm summer evenings. Not only did the stores stay open late in the summer, but there was also the Wrightville Cinema (two screens), the Wrightville Creamery ("GREAT Cherry-Cola Floats!"), the Wrightville Bowling Alley, and Aunt Mary’s Home-Cooking Family Style Restaurant ("Try Our Pie!").
In fact, Main Street was the kind of place where you could drop off your
teenage son or daughter after dinner and not worry about what would happen
to them before you picked them up there later that night. People came to
Main Street to see and be seen.
But James had other things on his mind. He had just spotted someone from a rival gang across the street.
James had been angry all day. A member of the rival gang had "dissed" one of James’s friends at summer school that day, so James felt he had to get revenge.
And he knew just what he would do: He would take out his gun, aim carefully, and "POW!", blow that sucker away.
Unfortunately, his aim was poor and he would miss the rival gang member. But before the crowds of people on the street would even realize what was happening, the rival gang member would take out his own gun and return the fire: "Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!"
His aim was also bad, however, and instead of hitting James, he would hit two innocent bystanders: John, a forty-year-old married man, and Mary Alice, a sixteen-year-old high school cheer leader.
By the time the police arrived, James had fled, but he was soon arrested. He was eventually tried at a cost of close to $50,000, and sentenced to 21 years in prison (but was released after serving only eight years) at a cost to taxpayers of over $150,000.
This was too bad, because he had hoped to use his athletic talents to get a scholarship to the state university, get a bachelor’s degree, become a pro-football player and then go to law school. (Total lifetime earnings lost: almost twenty million dollars.)
But now all those dreams had gone "up in smoke."
Sadly, because of his arrest, James would not have any children, either. And this was especially unfortunate because, if he had not been arrested, he would have married and had three children. One son would have become a teacher and writer, a daughter would have become a doctor, and the other son would have become the first African-American mayor of Wrightville.
In addition, if James had had children, one of his grandsons, Marshall (the son of the Mayor), would have become first a U.S. Senator, then the first African-American Vice-President of the United States, and, eventually, President when the elected President died in office. And, as President, he would have helped find a peaceful solution to the African Crisis of 2077.
John, the man who was hit, did not survive, and he left behind a widow and two children. Unfortunately, he had not taken out any life insurance, so his widow had to move out of their house and go on welfare.
And, because of John’s death, instead of graduating from college as they would have done, both of his children got pregnant and dropped out of high school.
Luckily the teenage girl, Mary Alice, survived, but she was seriously injured. In fact, her hospital bills totaled over $200,000 and her life-long rehabilitation costs were over $1,000,000. (This, of course, did not include her life-time loss of wages.) And since she had no health insurance, the county government had to pay the entire costs, which meant it had less money to invest in preventive health programs such as immunization of poor children.
Also, because of her injuries, Mary Alice could not have any children, and she would never marry. So she would never bear her son Conrad, who would have been the best basketball player to come out of Indiana since Larry Bird.
Mary Alice would also never achieve her life-long dream of becoming a nurse.
Because of her injuries, none of that would happen now.
The rival gang member, Ernesto, was already long gone by the time police arrived. (He was afraid that he might have been recognized by someone in the crowd, so he figured he’d better skip town.)
Of course, Ernesto was eventually caught after committing a series of bank robberies (including three in which innocent people were injured) while on the run (cost to banks and in medical costs: almost $500,000).
Ernesto was brought back to Wrightville for trial. (Total cost to all law enforcement agencies for his capture and arrest: $22,000.)
The first trial ended in a hung jury, but Ernesto was convicted in the second trial. That conviction was overturned on a technicality, but his conviction in the third trial was upheld. (Total cost for guards, judges, court reporters, prosecuting attorneys, court-appointed defense attorneys, court room costs, transcripts, and so on, for the three trials: over $1,000,000.)
Ernesto was sentenced to death for his crimes, but the appeals process dragged on for years. (Total cost to taxpayers of his incarceration and appeals: over $2,500,000.)
Meanwhile, the shooting had a profound effect on not only downtown Wrightville, but on the entire community as well: when people heard about the shooting, they stopped coming to visit the downtown area at night.
In an attempt to try and reassure the public, several of the store owners hired armed guards (at $12.50 an hour) to stand outside the doors of their shops, but it did no good. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Several of the stores, which counted on the profits from staying open late on the long summer evenings, ended up going out of business and were boarded up.
Many of the shops that used to line Main Street had employed local teenagers in the summer months, so when the shops closed, teenage unemployment rose, leading even more of the young people to join gangs. In addition, many of the shops had bought their goods from small family-run factories in the surrounding area, which also therefore suffered from the decrease in business.
Then, all of a sudden, graffiti started to show up on the boarded-up store fronts, declaring the street to be the turf of one gang or another. Shoplifting also increased, which forced the shop owners to raise their prices, not only to make up for the cost of the stolen goods but also to pay for expensive new electronic security systems. The higher prices, in turn, cut down on business even more.
So, before anyone realized what had happened, the street had deteriorated to the point where most of the businesses remaining were either bars, porn shops, or cheap hotels that rented rooms by the hour.
Of course, this put a lot of people out of work and also affected the property values of the homes surrounding the downtown area. This, in turn, lowered the amount of property taxes that the city could collect, which led to a cutback in city services such as trash collection and police on duty. Even the hours the libraries were open were cut back.
With lower property values and fewer public services, the entire city started to deteriorate. Young people who wanted a secure future began to move out of Wrightville to the big cities to look for work. And because it was losing its most talented young people, Wrightville deteriorated even more.
After a while, the only people who were left in Wrightville were the people who were too old or too poor to move away.
So, in the end, the total cost (including the cost of the African War of 2078) of that one bullet fired out of James’s gun would come to over a billion dollars. And this does not include the damage done to the lives of all those who knew either the culprits or the victims, nor the damage done to the ability of the townspeople to enjoy the town where they lived.
But luckily, James thought better of it,
and decided not to pull out his gun and fire, so none of those terrible
things happened.
The End
Richard Showstack is a full-time writer in Southern California. If you would like to get in touch with him, please send your e-mail to: Fables4Teenagers@AOL.com
ISBN 1-888725-64-8 The Gift of the Magic-and other enchanting character-building stories for smart teenage girls who want to grow up to be strong women. Richard Showstack, (2004) 5½ X8¼, 145 pp, $14.95
ISBN 1-888725-65 The Gift of the Magic-and other enchanting character-building stories for smart teenage girls who want to grow up to be strong women. Richard Showstack, (2004) MacroPrintBooks™ edition 16 pt, 8¼X6½, 280 pp, $24.95
ISBN 1-888725-66-4. A Horse Named Peggy-and other enchanting character-building stories for smart teenage boys who want to grow up to be good men. Richard Showstack, (2004) ) 5½ X8¼, 145 pp, $14.95
ISBN
1-888725-67, 8¼X6½, A Horse Named Peggy-and other enchanting
character-building stories for smart teenage boys who want to grow up to
be good men. Richard Showstack, (2004) MacroPrintBooks™ edition 16 pt,
280 pp, $24.95
Science & Humanities Press 636-394-4950
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