Washington may soon commit hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies and other businesses that never should have sought to profit from people who bought homes they couldn’t afford.

But no one is going to bail out Gaile Hensley. She'll just have to wait and hope that the big bailout bolsters the economy enough that some work trickles down to her.

Hensley profits from home sales, too, but in a more down-to-earth way. She and her husband, Todd Calhoun, own and operate TC Post & Signs (377-2136) in Boise. They saw a newspaper ad in 1995 for a real estate signpost-installation business and bought it, receiving “a few accounts and a little pile of wood posts,” Hensley says.

They charge $25 to install a sign in a front yard and to remove it. They set no limit on how long a sign can stay up at that price. Until two years ago, a typical sign would stay up six to eight months. Then the home would sell, and Hensley and her husband could reuse the sign to earn another $25. They depended on turnover to keep money coming in. Now a typical signs stays up a year or longer.

The couple and their son, Michael, who works part-time for the business, branched out a few years ago into building mailbox stands for subdivisions and homeowners. But that business has slowed, too, because subdivision development in the Treasure Valley has all but stopped. They used to spend $2,000 a month to buy the metal to build the mailbox stands, which they make at a rented shop in Eagle. Last month, they spent $175.

The slowdown intensified this year. Hensley declined to say how much the business takes in, but said revenues through Sept. 10 were half what they were a year ago.

The couple have raised rates a little, but there are other people, including real estate agents, who sell similar services, so competition limits what they can charge. Meanwhile, electric bills are rising, and so are other costs. A mailbox that cost $9 last year now costs $12.50, Hensley says.

“We’re looking at selling two of our trucks,” she says. “We are completely having to readjust our lifestyle. We’re cutting down on personal expenses.”

She’s making a little extra money doing bookkeeping and offering $1-a-minute psychic-intuitive readings at weekend fairs like the Hyde Park Street Fair. She's checking Craigslist for supplemental jobs.

And she hopes the economy turns around soon and homes start selling again: “We’d like to get back to where we were.”