To the Editor:

On Friday, April 23rd, there was a train wreck in the Bulletin between giving away the Depot for $20 bucks and the Town of Tryon needing to raise taxes due to the economy. Oh the humanity, brains splattered everywhere!

Tryon, Landrum and Saluda owe its existence to the train. In the past, vision, courage and craftsmanship converted raw materials into thriving townships. Today, Wall Street alchemists are turning homes and businesses into tombstones. Widows and orphans pray they can live their last days before the moneychangers take it all (again). Tryons new motto being, A great place to die.

Without vision, wisdom and action beyond the superficial, Tryon will fail. NC Rail has $545 million dollars (bytrain.org). What would it cost (without lawyers) to fix the washouts up Saluda Grade, $500k? What would a light-rail bus type train cost, another $500k? How much would be generated if a train ran from Landrum to Saluda three times a day? How much income from the publicity, visitors, real estate, shops and restaurant traffic would spin off?

Lord Norfolk and the wizards behind the curtain declare trains that ran for 100 years cannot run today. Authority rules over the unconscious, disregarding the obvious. Tryons town hall (originally a school) was built for $3,700, the depot building less than $1,000 built by local workers with trees taken down to create Melrose Avenue. Vote T.T Ballenger for Mayor (May 4th 1885), he will bring trains from Asheville to Charleston!

Todays financial experts are pyramid Pied Pipers. They take your money and give it to rats, returning two to six bits in exchange for a pig in a Polk. Compared to yesterday, they know nothing of enterprise. During the last depression, Polk County had 86,000 acres of working farmland growing apple, peaches, pears, grapes; corn, wheat, oats, rye, a variety of vegetables, chickens, pigs, cattle and six trains ran every day bringing and taking away people and goods on Trade Street, not Wall Street.

No virtual reality (like Air Guitar or lipstick on an old building) will save Tryon, let alone Polk County from failure without something that produces an honest income (vs. bait n switch). Religion will not save us, other than the ways of the Amish. Its not GE stock that brings good things to life its understanding that the past shows us how we once lived; the present how we live now and the future decided by the ones living today. RIP Tryon of 125 years (and 100 years of the Trojan Horse, AKA the Federal Reserve in 2013). The spirit of Morris the horse is dead, beaten by fools and their money.

David Widdicombe