KEEPING UP… Busy, busy, busy (Part 166b)
On Sunday, I was anxious
to get to church to talk with the minister. I’d left the Thrift Shoppe
before the women had tallied the monetary returns and having got caught
up in working on the racecar had put it out of my mind. Elle had persuaded
me to attend the 10am service with her and the kids but I didn’t want
to wait until then to find out how much money the church had netted. The
minister was in his office preparing his sermon when I got there. I
could tell he didn’t appreciate the interruption but I pressed on
anyway. The news was good… very good! He didn’t have a dollar amount but
did volunteer that there was enough to pay off the outstanding fuel oil
bill from the previous Winter and to pretty much pay for a full tank of
oil. That news made all the work and anxiety seem worth while. However…
if there was one annoying thing about the man it was that he was always
brimming with unrealistic optimism. Before leaving his office I heard
him make a projection on just how much money we could expect from the
shop each week. I had to bite my tongue recognizing that he was not a
business person. I don’t remember just what I said as I headed out the
door but it had to do with tempering the expected amount to be made when
announcing the results to the parishioners. I could tell he didn’t
appreciate the advice.
That Sunday was also Anne’s 8th birthday.
Both sets of parents came for a small party that night and, as usual, my
mother outdid Elle’s mother in the way of gifts for her. I’d tried to
persuade my mother not to try and outdo Elle’s mother but it was of no use.
My mother was jealous of the amount of time all three of the kids spent
with Elle’s mother and, in my mother’s mind, this was some sort of
perverse ‘payback’. Our anniversary had been on Friday but we both
agreed that we’d already celebrated it with our trip to Bermuda and
didn’t want any attention paid to it. We told both sets of parents that
we’d acknowledge it at Anne’s party but we didn’t it want to detract from
her excitement. So, other than a few ‘glares’ at my mother from Elle’s
mother it was a quiet evening.
There were four days to go to get
to the end of the ‘busy period’ and as I drove to work on Monday I
remember hoping that it would remain as ‘calm’ as it had been. Woody had
progressed well with her training and although Lorie had a little
apprehension about her being apart from the other tellers when at the drive-up and in needing
help I reminded her that to put one of the lobby tellers at the drive-up would be taken as a demotion by that teller. In a previous post I mentioned that I
was about “meetinged out”. A new Federal law had been passed earlier in the year that
concerned all types of financial institutions… Commercial Banks, Savings
Banks and Savings and Loan Associations. It was called the “Bank
Protection Act of 1968” and mandated that they focus on preventing bank
hold-ups. I’d been designated as the security officer for the bank and had attended a
few preliminary meetings as the ‘nitty gritty’ of the law was being
promulgated. I hadn’t had to do much while waiting for the final rules and had pretty much let it slip
from my mind. When the mail for the day was delivered to my desk there
was one ominous piece that stood out. It was from the FDIC, the overall
regulator for Savings Banks. Opening it I discovered the final rules
concerning the Act along with the most onerous part… the date our plan
(yet to be written) was to be in place.
I could go into a multi
page diatribe concerning my feeling towards Government regulation… but I
won’t (let's hear a loud “Thank you!”). The date for implementation was October 15th
which gave me but five days to get it written (and approved by the
Board) and in place. I was floored! I’d made arrangements to take Friday
off to go to the stock car championships and I was damned if I was
going to miss it. I’ll admit I went off the ‘deep end’ when I took the
sheaf of regulations over to Hobie and started in about how could they reasonably expect
all of what they wanted to be done accomplished in one week. He, very calmly, took the
papers and looked at the timed outline and then picked up the phone. I
stood there and listened as he talked with another banker about it for
about ten minutes. Hanging up the phone he smiled and said, almost
cavalierly, “Don’t worry about it.” And handed the papers back to me.
Then he told me to just get started on it and not worry about the dates. I
was about to leave his area when he added “Oh, by the way… the Board
approved a $1,000 increase in your pay.” You probably won’t believe it
when I tell you that it didn’t ‘register’ with me until I’d taken a few
steps away from his desk. I’d been so caught up with being relieved of
having to try and meet that unrealistic deadline that I wasn’t paying
attention.
Two ‘gifts’ in less than a minute! When the increase
registered with me I was standing right in front of the elevator and J J
appeared. For the past few days he’d been very cordial towards me and I
likened it to him having been ‘talked to’ by Bert, the president, about
stepping over boundaries (his ordering Joanie to do some work for him).
That notwithstanding, I stood there waiting for him to make another one
of his ‘special’ requests. But, that wasn’t the case. He wanted to get
some advice on buying a sailboat. I do remember standing there looking
at him, somewhat in disbelief. There I was with a lobby full of people and he wanted to talk about personal matters. Typical J J! I probably said something I shouldn’t
have but told him to see me after work.
What I wanted to do was to apply
my raise to my bi-weekly net pay to see how much more I’d be taking
home. I’d set a goal of netting $30 per paycheck and I knew this was
going to make it more. Being the personnel officer I knew the salary for
everyone, officers included. I knew this raise would get me above Jerry
and I couldn’t conceive of him getting more of a raise than what I got.
It was a ‘feel good’ minute (or more!). But… having just seen J J, I also
wanted to see how much closer to his salary this increase got me. He’d
come in as an Assistant Vice President at a salary that was way out of line
with the existing officers. However, I’d gotten more than he did in each my
first two reviews. His anniversary was in November and I was anxious to
see just what he’d get with the next one.
I ‘crunched’ the
numbers as soon as I got back to my desk and was excited to see that my net
figure would be closer to $35 per paycheck, $5 more than I’d hoped for.
In today’s world that doesn’t seem like much but back in the 60’s five
dollars actually bought something. I’m not sure but I’m thinking gas was
selling at around 33 to 35 cents a gallon which works out to a tankful.
The next thing I did was to call Elle. Her first question was to ask
how much more she could spend on clothes for the kids. The two older
girls were exactly the same size which meant we had to buy two of
everything. My thought was to save as much of the increase as possible.
I’d started a special savings account the prior year and had been able
to put almost $500 of my previous raise in it. In my ’numbers crunching’
I was hoping I’d be able to add at least $750 to it. The job was going
to be to sell the concept to Elle.
To be continued…
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