"I love listening to the stories people tell.

A few years ago: It was a yarn about the instant wealth won in the stock market. People like me, wage earners, were sharing the supposed inside information from their brokers. We knew something special; we could get in on a first stock offering before the crowd. We owned hundreds of shares in The Best-Ever-Investment Co. It was a sure bet, the promise of an early retirement. Thank you very much.

But life is funny. Dot-com riches morphed into a very old regional story.

Not long after the stock market bubble burst in 2001, a woman by the name of Gertrude Murphy died. She was 99 years old -- and the last resident of Lester, Wash.

Murphy moved to Lester in 1929 to work as a teacher. "The town was the largest community along the upper Green River," according to HistoryLink.org. "Like nearby settlements, Lester was developed in the 1880s to house crews needed to help trains climb the steep grade to the Stampede Tunnel. Later, logging operations helped the small communities grow."

Lester, like so many other Northwest timber, railroad or mining towns, once had a bright future. Or so it seemed."

Get the Story:
Today's bust is all about credit (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 9/17)

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