Show us the money. That has been the attitude of many creditors who were owed thousands of dollars when Condere Corp., the predecessor of Titan Tire of Natchez, went bankrupt in May 1997.

But about two weeks ago, those creditors – from contractors and utilities to suppliers paper products and building materials – began getting checks from Condere, most of them amounting to 65 percent of what the creditors were originally owed.

As of Monday, checks totaling about $14 million had been mailed to Condere creditors, said Luke Dove of Jackson, attorney for the Unsecured Creditors Committee.

Some creditors had held out hope that they would eventually see at least part of the money they were owed.

&uot;I&160;thought we’d ultimately get something,&uot;&160;said Cappy Stahlman, vice president of Stahlman Lumber Co., which received a check for an undisclosed amount around Sept. 17. &uot;I&160;just didn’t know when.&uot;

Others, like Bancroft Paper Co., could not wait that long.

&uot;We sold our account to an outside party earlier this month,&uot;&160;said Cheryl White, chief financial officer of Bancroft Paper Co., which is based in Monroe, La., but has a Natchez office.

&uot;We didn’t know when the money would be received,&uot; she said.

On July 30, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington cleared the way for creditors to be paid when he approved Condere’s liquidation plan.

Dove said most creditors in the Miss-Lou have now been paid. He would not estimate the number of local businesses Condere owed money, although it owed money to more than 2,000 unsecured creditors overall.

And many creditors still will not talk about the situation.

But Natchez Mayor Larry &uot;Butch&uot; Brown, owner of creditor Riverside Central Services and co-chairman of the Unsecured Creditors Committee, has said dozens of local businesses were owned money by Condere.

Some creditors have not yet received checks because amount of money they are owed is still in dispute, but Dove said he did not know how many.