Conversation between semi-retired/retired First Security Bank loan officers Gene Wallis and Don Brummett overheard in the buffet line of a local restaurant Friday night regarding the bank bomb threats earlier that day:

“I heard they were taking bets at the bank on which one of us it was that turned him down.”

“Him,” of course, is the anonymous author of the bomb-threat note Kenneth Brasell found taped to the front of his service station door Friday morning. The writer claimed to have placed a bomb in a bank because he’d been turned down for a loan. He also stated his hatred for doctors and hospitals which he apparently blames for the death of his wife. Finally, he added police (polices) to his hate list and challenged the Batesville Police Department to find the bomb he claimed to have placed (or planned to place) before his self-imposed deadline of Jan. 7 at 2 p.m.

“If you don’t take them seriously, you’ve got problems if something does happen,” Panola County Sheriff Hugh “Shot” Bright told a television reporter.

Taking him seriously involved a considerable contingent of law enforcement personnel from north Mississippi, many with specially-trained, bomb-sniffing dogs. They spent the day canvassing the banks — first those in Batesville, then Pope, then Sardis and Como — and then the hospital.

(Those outside law enforcement resources, incidentally, will be paid for by the jurisdiction that loaned them, Batesville Deputy Police Chief Don Province said. Trained dogs are usually paid for by the Department of Homeland Security in return for agreement to assist wherever needed, Province added.)

Behind the scenes, personnel at all banks have been combing records and wracking memories trying to match an unhappy loan applicant with the other circumstances the note writer revealed — loss of his wife, perhaps two years ago and apparently in circumstances that involved suffering and unpleasant encounters with the medical profession.

Investigators are poring over other bits of evidence from Friday and from the bomb threat phoned to Wal-Mart Sunday afternoon. Officials promise to prosecute to the full extent allowed by law to discourage imitators. As we have learned during the last few days, even a bomb hoax can be both disruptive and expensive.