Mr. Dukes: Actually, the company was born back in 1996 and turned 15 years old about two weeks ago. Born back in 1995, opened the doors and essentially was formed based on the community banking concept in the true spirit. I mean, literally people were contributing capital, like, in a small way as well as in a big way; their shareholders were widespread throughout the community. They took ownership literally in the company as well as ownership in seeing it successful. Essentially, the institution, basically if shareholders could afford it, it's just a community room because, as I view a small community, it needed a bigger facility so that more innovations could get formally made. So as soon as they got cumulatively profitable and moved into profitability - and they got it quite quickly - they basically formed a community room, and many groups in the community began to use that facility. So we also have a broad support and started to grow that where everybody in the bank was expected to take part in community events. We worked in concession stands, and we would help out in taking admissions for ballgames, etc., on a monetary basis. Then as the company grew successful, there was identifying fact in matters where it was not so successful. It actually was named Appalachian Community Bank. This bank started out - the name of this bank started out as Gilmer County Bank. So in an effort to expand, we went up and fought back, and then established a branch in Blue Ridge as well. So we became a three-branch bank in three of the locations over the highway 515 corridor, and it serves the Appalachian Mountain sharing communities in North Georgia. Then we expanded out with additional capital. Generically, we expanded out west of here, all the way to Whitfield County, which is Dalton, Chatsworth. And then east of here, we expanded out toward Dahlonega, Dawsonville to Dawson County. Essentially, that's where we are today.
Along the way, the economic machine of the company got shut down because of subprime lending and the effects that subprime lending had on the sales or the ability to sell, which became the lack or inability to sell real estate. Because we are - one of the niche industries we have in the mountain communities in Georgia, we have an instant situation where basically people from Georgia go to Florida. In these parts of Florida, you can go down in the spring and summer, and see more Georgia tags than Florida tags. In the fall it reverses. In in fall the Florida people like the mountains, so they come to the Georgia mountains on many weekends especially. So when they come here, basically Florida is made up of mostly more of the folks from the north that go down to Florida, and then they end up trying or doing something in the mountains of Georgia. We call it "halfbacks" because they go all the way down to Florida and go halfway back. In their second homes, retirement homes, it's a big retirement community. And they kind of basically love mountains in North Georgia and all the vegetation; we got nice lakes up here. It's a great niche industry, but when subprime lending became huge with equity-owned houses in Florida brought up, then we basically got it wrong.
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