AT THE FSLIC AUCTION

OUR REPORTER More new Mercedes than have ever graced Garland streets were wedged side-by-side in the field behind the J. Tippen Company warehouse. This was not just any auction, but the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. auction, filled with loot from the infamous Vernon Savings.

I went looking for the legendary naked Indians, those life-sized bronzes that so many reporters had used as the consummate symbol of the good-timin’ thrifts, the savings and loans that didn’t know how to invest wisely in real estate or in art.

I wandered through acres of adding machines and conference tables upon which many a deal had been plotted. I weeded through the phones and walked by some beds (beds?) to the antiques and then the Western art. But the noble redmen and redwomen were nowhere to be found.

Since these Indians had also been favorite whipping boys of FSLIC officials, I wondered if the feds had kept the natives as a fond memory of this mammoth liquidation. Absolutely not, says David Barr, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. spokesman in charge of PR for the auction. “They don’t even sound familiar,” he says. “But we did sell everything and made $802,000.” (A nice band-aid for a multibillion-dollar problem.)

Unless Barr speak with forked tongue, the mysterious Indians have vanished. That should help some bad memories to fade as well.