Banking in Loonville

I had been in town but briefly when I deemed that establishing a line of credit with the local bank would enhance my reputation as a responsible citizen. So I entered the bank one sunny summer day and told the cashier that I would like to take out a loan. She ushered me to the front corner office where Banker Harley sat behind his mahogany desk. I introduced myself, he laid his seegar in the ashtray on his desk and waved me preemptorily to a chair. "What can I do for you?" I would like to borrow 150 bucks, a number that I only partly drew out of thin air, for I wanted to do a few things. Well, he asked me all the usual: why I wanted the money, how was I going to repay it, how many children did I have, and where did I obtain my livelihood. I don't recall that he asked where I went to church, but I have been asked that in interview settings.

I told him I was a teacher and was employed by the neighboring community. He picked up the stogie, took a long draw, then laid it back down. "Waaal," he drawled, "I can't say that being a teacher is a helluva recommendation." He then related to me about four stories illustrating his thesis that teachers weren't necessarily reliable. Then he picked up his pen, scrawled a note on a yellow pad, ripped it off and handed it to me. "Give this to the girl. She'll fill in when you're going to repay this and you can sign it." I walked out with $150.00, American.

Just outside Banker Harley's office was the desk of the bank veep. Unbeknownst to me, VP Warren had come back from his lunch hour and sat listening to the business being conducted between me and his boss.

Two days later, Saturday morning, I was filling the auto with petrol at the local station when Warren drove up on the other side of the pump. He introduced himself and said that he had heard that I was a teacher at Podunk Elementary School. Yes, indeed. "I", he said, "am vice-president and general flunky over at the bank. Why don't you stop by my house in a few and we'll chew some fat." Since he lived just around the corner and one block off the main drag, I thought, Why not? And thus began a life-long friendship. Warren was two years older than I, but his children were the same ages and in the same number as mine. Later, when our wives were introduced to each other, the foundation for a rewarding friendship was completed.

© 2010 David W. Lacy

Retrotech in the House: Timekeeping

We have an old Ingraham Nyanza Banjo Clock on our dining room wall. It was manufactured about 1915 by the E. Ingraham Company. This is an eight-day key-wind pendulum movement. The case is 10 inches wide and 39 inches tall.

Elias Ingraham (1805 - 1885) was noted for his clock case designs, for which he held many patents. Following WWII, Ingraham Company continued making clocks, but dropped production of pendulum clocks in favor of electric and alarm clocks.

Our clock, when it is allowed to run, keeps very accurate time. Sometimes during a scrabble game, BBBH will say, "That ticking's enough to drive you to drink." There have been occasions when overnight guests have gotten up in the night and stopped my clock. Such nerve.

You may view pictures of our clock over at String Too Short to Tie, if you wish.

Engineering in Loonville

I am in the driveway behind the house cleaning the car. I have washed it and now I am vacuuming the inside. Delbert and his friend, Will, who lives next door to the east, are just the other side of the fence in our backyard. I stop the machine, as I have finished that chore, just in time to hear Will say, "Let's go over to my Grandfarter's. He'll give us a dime to leave him alone." Delbert said, "Don't you mean 'grandfather'?" Will replies, "Yeah, that, too. But I meant what I said. C'mon, you'll see. Just don't pull his finger!

Mrs. Lewis is a widow. She has two children, Will, seven and Pamela, nine. Like the neighbors on the other side of us, these are pleasant children, and our children have developed good rapport with them.

Mrs. Lewis, Carol to her friends, is a hard-working woman, clerking at the local general store by day, and taking in ironing which keeps her busy at all hours. She has her admirers; and has on numerous occasions, she confided to my wife, been asked "out." She has declined all these invitations, saying she is much too busy trying to raise her kids to get herself involved with a man who, "for crying out loud might need even more raisin' than they do."

On the other side of Mrs. Lewis live Mr. and Mrs. Adams. No one ever sees Mrs. Adams, except once a month when he guides her solicitously to the car. They always return in exactly four hours. I sort of got acquainted with Mr. Lewis when I discovered that he played chess. We would meet in the little park behind the firestation perhaps three or four times each summer for a game. I never learned much about him from the "horse's mouth." We were so evenly matched at chess that virtually all our games ended in a draw.

But talk is not an expensive commodity in Loonville, and many people over the years were quite willing to fill me in. Not all the stories would fit appropriately into a family newspaper such as this one, but one of the best followed along these lines.

Mr. Adams is a genius. I can believe it. Mr. and Mrs. Adams are reclusive. No kidding. In his youth, Mr. Adams studied engineering at Purdue and was employed throughout his career by a leading construction company, where he rose to the level of High Mucky-muck. They bought the little house on Water Street when he retired and moved into the community. (This datum in itself leads me to suspect that much of what I was told was created from whole cloth, inasmuch as they were not "local." Neither were we, and heaven knows what was said about us.)

Mrs. Adams liked her little house very much, and Mr. Adams found much pleasure in tending the flowers and dressing the yard. But there was one flaw. The house had no basement, and the Missus very much wanted one, for whatever reason no one could fathom. So the Mister devised a plan to create the desired unit. Having sources (from his past career, you know) he obtained an unspecified amount of dynamite. But then we don't need to know how much. Only he needed to know, and he did. He labored over his drawings and the mathematical calculations into the wee hours of many a morning, until one day the time had come. He went into the crawl space with his blasting equipment, wires and such paraphenalia and set his charges, oh, so carefully, in just the right places.

Shortly after eight the following morning, that is after all the neighbors had gone to work and the kids were in school, there was heard a dull "Ka-whump!" in the neighborhood. It was said that the chinaware in the cabinets nor the vases on the tables never so much as jiggled. Mr. Adams then hired a group of transient laborers to remove the loosened earth from beneath his house. Then he proceeded to construct a finished basement under his domicile!
© 2010 David W. Lacy

Retrotech in the House: Sewing

Over on String Too Short to Tie, I have posted a sewing story which is accompanied by pictures of an old Abbott Sewing Machine which occupies a decorative space in our home. You may go there if you wish to see pictures. The Abbott was, I think, produced in Ontario in the last half of the nineteenth century. The machine is a work of art. But the seamstress in the house uses a Singer 401 Slant Needle DeLuxe, which while a bit old itself, is still a very efficient machine. The Little Lady, in her younger day, was a sewing instructor and demo operator for Singer. She is still adept at the skills entailed in sewing. But while she has looked at the up-to-date offerings in the sewing machine market, she is satisfied that she prefers sewing to mastering computer skills, hence chooses not to buy new equipment. Besides, I am fond of the old New England motto, "Use it up, wear it out; make it do, or do without." And the current machine is far from being worn out.

Independence in Loonville

Directly across the street from us lived Mrs. Smith. She was ninety-two years old, and as the cliche says, spry as a spring chicken. I had cultivated a friendship with her since she was a very interesting lady and seemed to have very few visitors. She would sit on her porch of an evening, gently rocking in the swing. I would saunter across the street and sit on the step and visit with her. But our relationship had gotten off to a rocky start.
This occured when, one Saturday as I watched her pushing her old reel-type mower across the front yard, I thought to do the Boy Scout thing, you know, the good deed. I walked over. She stopped. I reached for the machine handle, saying, "Let me give you a hand with that." Mrs. Smith jerked the handle away from me and snarled, "Look, Sonny. I'm perfectly able to take care of myself and my yard. I'm old, but I ain't dead yet." I allowed that I was sorry, only trying to be a good neighbor. She apologetically said, "I'm sorry, too. But if I stop moving, I'll lock up and maybe never get started again."
One evening, I confided in her that Dr. Malton seemed to me to be even more arrogant than the average sawbones. "Don't you give him no nevermind. I recollect that whippersnapper when he was nothin' mor'n a snot-nosed ragamuffin, runnin' 'round annoying all the neighbors. He ain't no better'n he oughta be."
Sadly, several years later, Mrs. Smith, now well past 95, said to me one day, "I just wish I could die." "Oh," I retorted, "you don't mean that." "Yes," she assured me. " I most certainly do. I've lived way too long. If you ever get to be this old, you'll understand."
It was not long before her wish came true.

© 2010 David W. Lacy

Treasure Island

I have a much-too large collection of old books. (Nah, one can't have too many books) Occasionally I pick one from its shelf and peruse it for old-times' sake. I decided a few days ago to re-read Treasure Island. My copy was published between 1901 and 1904. I know this because the company that printed it was in business only during those years. The book is intact, except for bits and pieces of paper that have flaked off in handling; and a lot more of these bits fell to the lap and the floor during my recent handling of the book. But the text is all there, undamaged.

I have come to suspect that when most people say, "I am re-reading..." followed by the name of a classic, they in truth are reading it for the first time. I know that that is true for me in this case. As were you, if you are "of a certain age," I was introduced to Stevenson and this story in high school Freshman English class. And though I have been, since toddler stage, a voracious reader, guess what would "kill" the desire to read a selection quicker than anything? Give up? To have it assigned in class to be read. Thus I probably learned that RLS was a seminal novelist, that this particular story is a morality tale and a "coming of age" tour de force, blah, blah blah, and yet I never read it until last week! Shame on me? Indeed. But I was fourteen, what do you expect?

I quite enjoyed this story; and I think I would have done when I was fourteen. What's the difference between a fourteen year-old boy and a seventy-six year old man? About 62 years.

Here you go, Miss Long. I've completed that assignment.

Ben Lacy

Ben B. Lacy was born September 25, 1919 in Wiley, Colorado. Uncle Ben passed away July 12, 2010 in Pueblo, Colorado.

I posted this tribute to Uncle Ben on his 90th Birthday.

http://vanilla-ststt.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-uncle-ben.html

I will miss this wonderful strong and righteous man.