Finding Justice In A Small Town

A reader from Iowa wrote in with the following commentary on a previous article I had written about the failure of local leadership to take moral positions when their own vested interests (business and social connections) were at stake.

I am also from a small community and this column fit our situation to a "T". My husband and I own a business and I am also an officer of the area historical society. At times, decisions that are made in one arena will possibly affect the other. It can go either direction.

The dilemma. Here is an example. We needed new doors for our Museum. Our building is a National Historic Landmark, built in 1878 and the first brick building in our community. It is pretty important to us that it be as original as possible.

The double front doors face the northwest, which is the worst direction in the winter in this part of the country. Our old doors were not stopping the winter's sleet, snow, winds, etc. We do not have a lot of support for our Society. We ordered the double front doors from a local lumberyard (the other lumberyard wouldn't touch it).

The lumberyard chose a carpenter to install them. They had fit too tight so this carpenter cut them down. As a result, we had a one-half to a three-quarter inch open space between the two doors. We could see across the street through this opening. Also, the carpenter had cut the bottoms of the doors and we could see daylight under them.

Attorney advice. We were astounded. On the approval of the Board, I drafted a letter to the lumberyard and then dropped it off to our attorney. He has been wonderful about not charging us for the little things we have needed doing. When I later went to visit him about this. Everybody wanted their money.

The attorney said that the lumberyard was one of his clients and that I should take pictures and not pay for the doors. He said, "If they should sue, we would have something to show the judge."

Who holds the bag? Well, the carpenter "finished" the job. We now have doors that have weather-stripping around everything! I am sure it will not last in this country. Not only that, but our lawyer will not defend us if we are sued, because the lumberyard is a paying, bigger client!!!

The lumberyard would not come down on their price saying that it was "not the doors" fault and that they should have picked another carpenter.

The carpenter put many more hours in than he had estimated to us. Well, the endgate of all this was that we ended up paying for the entire cost of the door plus the original estimated cost of the carpentry work. We don't have enough money to be sued and take it to court and fight it.

Conflict of interest. This same lawyer (he is a nice gentleman) years ago would not defend us when a neighbor was putting up a grain dryer bin next to us. We wanted to stop it because we had a son with health problems which would be aggravated by the grain dust.

The lawyer told us then what he had told us now. Take pictures, document everything and maybe another lawyer would help. We found out the reason why. We as paying clients took a back seat to one of his employees who was related to the neighbor.

Implications for local communities. When the gentleman who wrote you said that he was becoming cynical with the entire concept of local leadership and that the best way to destroy institutions and government was for good people to do nothing. Boy, was he correct! Other words also come to mind: anger, disgust, contempt, disdain, etc.

I don't know if a lot of small towns are the same way, but if our ancestors had operated in the same way, there would not have been a town, period, because nothing would have been done about doing things right or righting wrongs. Of course, in our real early days, we had vigilantes in our area. They didn't do such a great job of it either.

Thank you so much for "listening." I sure would not have been able to put this in our local newspaper. We would be cast out as troublemakers and who knows what else would have happened. One thing is for sure, no donations to the Society!