BANKING -101
It is essential to good living that we understand the fundamentals of banking. We need to learn to save a portion of our hard earned wages and to do so with every intention of letting the basic amount stay
secure and untouched. It is intended to help sustain you in your advanced years.
I once worked with a fine old gentleman, who was employed as a “Sanitation Engineer” in the large industrial plant in which we both worked. His title was so listed on the “Table of Organization” chart in the
General Manager’s office. Translated into everyday terms, it meant he was hired to be a Janitor.
And, he was good at it, too. In better days, Riley had been a carpenter, I knew. He developed some physical problems which denied him access to the tools and contortions of carpentry, but he had a native
sense of neatness and took excellent care of cleaning our writing and artwork department and the area adjoining, as well. We found he could be trusted to make us look good.
I don’t remember how it came up but we found Riley to also be amazingly well read and well-informed about many things. We soon realized that he was putting us more often than we realized . He spoke one day
of having, as a carpenter and stone mason, worked on the original construction of the small town bank in the bedroom-community in which I lived, and where I once had a checking account. He praised the original owners of the
bank and some people I had know for many years. He told how grateful he was to those men who had started the bank and , especially, to one man who, more or less, worked there all his life. Riley told what a fine building it was they
built. Natively quarried limestone and it had white columns on the tiled portico so the it looked more like a bank than just another fast food drive-in location.
As with so many buildings of that era, it was, even as we talked , sitting derilict and unoccupied. It had been mergered out of existence some years ago, acquired and expanded into a big banking blah with
various names and branches everywhere else. That saddened Old Riley quite a bit and I can remember him learning thoughtfully on his broom handle as he remembered the good old days. He told us how much he admired that
bank cashier who had been there so many years.
“Even as that bank building was being built,” he recounted “and the sturdy vault walls of concrete vault were being poured, Mr. D. stood there and convinced me, a young man at the time, to take life-long
saving seriously. No one had ever talked with me in such a way since my Daddy died.”
Riley paused a moment, but did not shed tears. A moment, and he continued .
“An’ do you know what that banker man did? He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out some loose change. He counted three pennies into my hand and three for himself.
“Those are yours, Riley!” he said firmly “Yours to keep And, I clutched my new copper coins, bright and shiny in my hand and followed his example as we both threw the copper coins into to the small river of
concrete flowing into the wooden frame forming a wall of the bank’s vault!”.
“Now, Riley - I want you to remember this moment!. Whatever happens to you in the future, you can always say you’ve got money in the Weyers Cave Bank!”
“It still there, too!” Riley insisted. ”I haven’t touched one cent of it!”
A.L.M. September 9, 2002 [c-624wds]
