A Legacy Project

What was the source of your income when you were growing up? What did you learn about money?

As soon as I had money coming in, my weekly allowances stopped. I was no longer on the dole. My dad took me over to Freeland State Bank and opened a savings account for me. The bank was a light brick building on the corner of Main and Washington, a building with no windows, not even a drive-through, a convenience that had not been invented yet. It looked imposing, impregnable, capable of keeping our money safe and, if it were to happen, strong enough to withstand a nuclear blast.  I was introduced to Jack McLaughlin, bank vice president, and to Bill Hartley, a teller, and to Ruth Bennett, a teller and also the mother of one of my friends. I went home with a little passbook, into which Bill or Ruth entered and initialed deposits and withdrawals I made. Accent on deposits. I didn’t know it, but this was all part of my parents’ ethic of thrift. You squirreled money away rather than wasting it on stuff you didn’t need. And if you asked them, that included almost everything. 

I made weekly visits to Freeland State Bank and saved at least half my paper route money.  Every week on Saturday morning I collected payments from my customers. Then I went to the Freeland Post Office and bought a money order from Alfreda Swanson to pay Midland Daily News for the papers I had delivered. It never occurred to me not to pay that bill. There must have been paper boys who stiffed the Newspaper and who were summarily fired. To thank us for our loyalty and service, Midland Daily News held a paperboy banquet every year at the K of C hall in Midland, a noisy, chaotic affair I attended once, with Ricky Elembaas, a Freeland kid who had the other Midland Daily News route. 

“Wait until you save your first $100,” my dad said one day. I opened my passbook and looked at my balance, $34. He said I would feel a great sense of accomplishment.

The bank had a large parking lot on the east side of the building, with the smoothest cement in town. When skateboards became a thing, that lot was a destination. A skateboard was something I didn’t really need. (I’m not sure where I would have gone to buy one.) I made one out of a sawed-off plank and roller skate wheels I took off a skate and bolted to the plank. (Thrift!) One day two or three of us were careening across the lot when Cliff Reevey pulled up in his shiny Cadillac. He was Bank President, the big cheese. I’d seen him once or twice inside. He never said much. He always looked like he had a mouth full of spiders. This day he got out his car and nodded at our bikes. “Whose are those?” he said. When we pointed at ourselves, he said, “Well get ‘em to hell out of here.”