TIGHTWAD, Mo. — How can a bank lose in a town like this?

There's a beautiful lake nearby that attracts hordes of boaters in the summer, a bounty of inexpensive land and loads of frugal people — whose forefathers were so cheap that for nearly a century the town has been known as Tightwad.

The residents here — all 63 of them — take that name as a badge of honor.

"I'm proud to be a Tightwadian," said Tom Skaggs, 72, the town's first mayor and a former member of the volunteer fire department. "Whenever I say that, people laugh."

When the Citizens Bank of Windsor opened a branch here in 1984, it was only natural that officials would call it Tightwad bank. It quickly became a prime gathering spot in this square-mile patch of west-central Missouri.

Residents raced to open accounts and snatch up free piggy banks and key chains. A group of regulars began dropping by each day to gossip. Soon, nearly every adult in town had an account.

"I had people calling all the time, wanting information — wanting anything with the name on it," said Carol Jordan, 47, a teller for the past 14 years. "For the people here, it was convenient. And it was their town, in print, for everyone to see."

Once word spread, it seemed everyone wanted to be a Tightwadian. People wrote to open accounts with the bank, whose distinctive logo was a fist tightly clutching a wad of bills. On the checks, the logo was printed next to thee account holder's name.

"They almost always asked for the same thing: 'Can I open an account? And how quickly can I get my checks?' " Jordan said.

As the story goes, it all began with a watermelon.

Local lore maintains that it was a really good melon. In the early 1900s, the village mailman, on his rounds for the day, stopped by the town grocer and was immediately smitten by the large green orb.

But there was a problem.

Laden with his mailbag, the mailman was unable to carry the watermelon on his route. He asked the shopkeeper to hold on to it until he had finished his duty, and the shopkeeper agreed.

The mailman eventually returned to the store only to discover that the shopkeeper had sold his beloved watermelon to another customer who had offered 50 cents more.

As every person who has lived in Henry County since then knows, "he called the shopkeeper an old tightwad, and the name stuck," Skaggs said.

Tightwadians still get a kick out of the story and, in an odd way, have come to embrace some of the principles of frugality. Sitting on an overstuffed couch in his living room, less than a block from the bank, Willie Kelley talked matter-of-factly about his frugal ways.

"I don't care if people think I'm cheap," said Kelley, 82, a former steel-mill worker. "I'm not; I'm responsible."

Tightwadians figured they had a way to fight decline — they were right next to one of the state's largest lakes, the Harry S. Truman Dam and Reservoir. Fishermen from the Midwest and beyond were drawn to its stock of bass and crappie.

Small businesses catering to tourists cropped up in nearby Warsaw, and real-estate agents wooed urbanites with dreams of retiring in the country or buying vacation homes.

Why, thought the townsfolk, couldn't Tightwad enjoy some of that growth?

Jay Simmons, chairman of the Citizens Bank, agreed. Many Tightwadians cheered when he came to town more than 20 years ago to talk about expanding his family business.

The town incorporated in 1984, the same year the bank opened. "Suddenly, everyone was talking about us," Skaggs said. "Before the bank, we weren't even on the state highway map."

But thriftiness was not enough to keep Tightwad bank afloat.

Over the years, the bank fell victim to the same malady that has afflicted much of the rural Midwest.

"Tightwad has only grown by eight residents in all this time," said Gil Trout, chairman and chief executive officer of UMB Bank's south-central region. UMB now owns the Tightwad branch.

So, late last year, UMB Bank announced Tightwad bank would close at the end of January.

As the news spread, the bank's dying gasp brought a resurgence of attention from curiosity-seekers. Dozens of people across the country wrote letters begging to buy anything with the bank logo on it. One man from Iowa penned, "Here is $10 cash. Please send 10 voided Tightwad checks to me."