I want one of these. That is all.

I have spent many a day collecting coins, rolling them, and taking them to the bank to deposit them. Mostly for PTO-type non-profit school organizations but occasionally back in the day, I would collect enough coins around the Landfill to roll them and take them to the bank to deposit. Or I would have to cash out Trunky but that’s a whole ‘nother story. These days I am lazy enough that, when I have collected more change than I can manage, I dump it into a Coinstar musheen and donate it to a charity.

I come from a banking family, at least in the last three generations. Before that we were fur traders in northern Saskatchewan and grocers and not sure what else. But banking… We were not one of those rich fancy banking fams that you might hear about in the news or maybe there is a rich banking family in your town. My banking fam? Not rich although I can’t ever remember a time when there wasn’t enough to eat or warm clothing to wear or any of the other things that children need when they are growing up.

Long story short, my dad joined his dad in the banking business back in the day and I grew up playing with adding machines and visiting the children’s teller window that you see here in the next photo. I do not know these beautiful girls but that’s my grandaddy serving them for a publicity shot.

I got to run around all over the insider part of the bank including the vault and I remember going to annual xmas parties there to put up the xmas tree (gold ornaments) and a Santa in a gold suit.

The First National Bank morphed into 1st of America and then National City and eventually PNC and PNC ended up closing the local bank a year after The Commander died. My dad was long dead by that time but when I went over to empty out the safe deposit box, the bank manager (also The Commander’s next door neighbor) gave me a whole bunch of old photos of my dad and granddaddy that had been dredged up from the basement. (I believe she took some time off but has landed a job in a branch in a different city.)

It never fails to crack me up that I have ended up working in the online banking industry. My granddaddy died in 1968 (when I was in 8th grade), before the banking biz began to switch over to computers. That switch began in the late 1970s and early 1980s and my dad got caught in the middle of it and it was not fun for him. I understand why since I got involved with computers around that time.

Computerized banking was in its infancy then and yet here I am, making a darn good living designing online banking functionality. Who knew?

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