Folks used to know who had real money and who didn’t. Not anymore.

Nowadays, some people live in $300,000 homes and drive expensive SUV’s while having to make their monthly mortgage payments with whichever credit card that isn’t maxed out. You may be falsely led to believe that your neighbors have real money only to learn that they are as broke as you.

This deceitful conduct is unfair to people with real money. After all, what’s the purpose of clawing, scratching and scrambling to win the rat race when someone else can fake it? It’s shameful conduct.

When I returned to Athens in November1968 to practice law I quickly learned who had real money and who didn’t.

Men who had real money wore white socks.

I first observed this oddity when I went to borrow $1,800 to open my law practice. I walked across the street to Limestone County Bank and talked to Mr. John Huber, a loan officer who had known my family and me for years.

I observed that Mr. Huber wore white socks.

He was a careful steward of the bank’s money and made no loan unless you could prove that you didn’t need it. It was a sound business practice. After all, loaning money to people who need it is obviously a bad risk.

He wanted to know why I needed such a large sum and what I was going to do with it. I was confident and told him I was in good health, was licensed to practice law and expected to be successful.

“Well, I don’t know. That’s a lot of money to have to pay back.”

He hemmed and hawed awhile but finally agreed to make the loan, provided that Mama, who sold shoes at Ben Jaffee’s Department Store and earned about $50 a week, would co-sign my note.

Fortunately, Mama had more confidence in me than Mr. Huber and co-signed the note. Otherwise, I might have returned to my only acquired skills at the time, which were sacking groceries at A&P and working at McConnell’s Funeral Home.

Later, I noticed that other prominent Athens men also wore white socks. At first, I thought there was an outbreak of athlete’s foot in Athens. Wrong! These men didn’t have athlete’s foot; they had real money!

At the time, Wall Street bankers were sporting designer suits, hand-made Italian shoes and silk socks. In Athens, the status symbol was a 25-cent pair of white socks purchased at Kmart.

Look at what has happened since then. The Wall Street “designer suit” crowd has run Bear-Stearns Company, one of the largest banks, into the ground. Mr. Huber never lost a nickel of the bank’s money. If I were in Congress, I wouldn’t vote to bail out the silk sock crowd. I’d tell ‘em to go to Wal-Mart and buy a pair or white socks and start handling money more responsibly.