December 10, 2010
Second Job at the Sac City State Bank
About 1964
After Mom and I started DaLe Monograming & Signs, our family business,
Editor’s Note: I will come back after I am finished with the Sac City State Bank section and tell you about how Mom and I started DaLe, our family business. It is a pretty long story.
I worked at helping build DaLe and took no pay out of the money we made. We both reinvested everything we made from the sale of our lettering and sign painting back into the business.
Apparently there were people noticing that we had a good business but we were not spending anything foolishly. Mr. George Pingrey, our neighbor and member of the Methodist church we attended, must have been one of those people observing our business methods because he approached me one day.
He said that one of his tellers at the Sac City State Bank, where he was the president, had been drafted into the army and was going to Korea.
Mr. Pingrey ask me if I would like to fill in for him until he returned from his tour of duty. Mr. Pingrey emphasized that I could get good experience and would learn to meet people there at the bank.
I talked it over with mom and we agreed that I could work at the bank from 8 AM until 3PM, then take a 2 hour break and go back to work at the family business from 5 PM until midnight or later plus I would have Saturday and Sunday afternoons free to do my sign painting. So I told Mr. Pingrey I would like to work at the bank and started working at the bank the next week.
I was assigned to start in the bookkeeping department to familiarize myself with the basic banking procedures. I soon became acquainted with all of the other employees there at the bank.
There were two other men working there at the bank besides the president, Mr. Pingrey and the rest were females. I the receptionist, three tellers and two other ladies worked in bookkeeping with me.
Keep in mind that this was what I called BC (Before Computers) and all of the bookkeeping functions were preformed manually with the help of some simple calculating and posting machines for the most part. We did have 2 electronic posting machines and other basic calculating machines to assist us in our work.
The process was to handle each check that was cleared through the bank and record the transaction on each customer’s account card. The amounts and all other information was inserted by manually pressing the correct key in the posting machine.
The figures were double checked then the processed checks were canceled and filed in the customer’s account file.
I worked in this bookkeeping area for a few months and when I had learned enough about the basic procedures I was promoted to be a teller.
I was assigned a teller location and had what I called my own window. This was where walk-in customers would walk up to the teller windows to perform what ever transactions they wanted . It was usually either depositing money into their personal or business account or withdrawing money.
We also sold Savings Bonds and checked on whatever they wanted us to check on concerning their account. All loan payment we processed but a loan officer was the only one that could authorize and process a loan.
I will never forget a couple of the employees that became very good friends. One was a teller right next to me on the teller line and the other was the receptionist.
Susan, the teller next to me was very crippled from polio she had when she was a young girl and had some difficulty getting around, but her sense of humor and attitude went far beyond anything else. She and our receptionist, Nelda were good friends and were always clowning around.
When I was getting close to needing a haircut, Susan would start calling me “Rinny” (after Rin-Tin-Tin the famous TV dog character). That prompted me to get a haircut as soon as possible
Once she and Nelda went shopping in Fort Dodge and when Nelda went up to the cashier to write a check for her purchases Susan went over and looking over her shoulder commented. “Your not going to write another one of those are you?”
Nelda , of course, didn’t know what to say, was embarrassed and they soon got the situation corrected after explaining to the cashier they worked together in a bank and what was going on.
One time I recall during our afternoon coffee break I got into trouble with the other employees. Each day we would take turns bring “treats: (donuts cake or something). I had a cherry cheese cake that my wife had made and it was one of my favorites.
After the morning coffee I took the half of the cheesecake that was left home. (that was back when we went home for lunch)
When it came time for the afternoon coffee break they were looking for the cheese cake! Susan never did let me live that episode down.
Meeting my First Wife
I was always being teased about being single and kept being asked when I was going to get a girl friend. Well it was during my time at the bank when I met my first wife.
I might mention here that I borrowed $600 from the bank to purchase my first car, a 1960 push button Plymouth Valiant.
One business customer that always came to make her deposit at my teller window was an employee of the city telephone company, Jo was teasing me one day about a new teacher that had just started teaching a summer class in the high school there in Sac City.
I tried to tell her that in a small town like Sac City you don’t just call a girl out of the clear blue …besides , I said, I don’t know her phone number. That was the wrong thing to tell someone that worked at the telephone company. The next day, Jo presented me with a slip of paper with her name and phone number.
I slipped the note with the phone number into my pocket and went on about my business.
That evening I had gone over to a young friend’s house, John Keir, upon his request. He was the brother of a girl that I had dated a few times. While we were sitting in his living room talking, I was trying to be the “Know it all about dating” and reached into my pocket as I was telling him that he needed to be calm and straight forward about talking to girls
(I really didn’t know what I was talking about) there was the note I was given that afternoon with the new teacher’s phone number. Her first name was Sharon.
Welcome Wagon Representative
I went over to his telephone, (without thinking) and started dialing the number on the note. It rang a few time then was answered by a very gruff female voice. I introduced myself as a local “welcome wagon” representative and was making everything up as I continued. We talked for just a few minutes and then I said thank you for your time and hung up.
That was my first encounter with the girl that was to become my first wife. I will need to continue my writing of this part of my life in the next LILAGCS Blog memory next week.
I will probably fill in this weekend with some “Extras” to take a break from the Memory Blog but the item I will write in my extras will pick up some special events I don’t know where to put or things I forgot to mention in past Blogs.
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