SLOGGING THROUGH WINTER… Good & bad (Part 169i)
As I had
expected, during the night the wind had blown snow into the driveway. I’d
gotten used to having my neighbor, John, come over with his tractor to
clear it away after it snowed. But, it had stopped before dark and when I
went out to my car to go to work I found a drift about knee high right
at the bottom. Standing there, looking at it, I knew I wanted no part of
shoveling it. Sometimes, when weighing choices, you make the wrong one.
I decided to try and blast my way through it with the car. The area around where it was
parked was basically clear as the wind had blown most of the snow on
out into the farm field. I had no trouble moving my car and turning it
to make the run down the driveway to the road. I don’t know how fast I
was going when I hit the snow but I do know I didn’t make it out to the
road. Stopped, I sat there and called myself a whole bunch of
uncomplimentary names… and then had to fight to get the door open. Not a
good way to start the day!
It was about 10am by the time I
finally got to the bank and found everyone had made it in to work. But
it seemed as if the customers were staying away. I checked the transaction
register for the previous day and found we’d only processed around 60
transactions. With snow it was to be expected that it would be slow but
on this day with the sun out and no wind there were still very few customers.
I’d expected to go to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting but it had
been cancelled the day before. That meant I had about three hours with
nothing on my schedule. I was still peeved that Hobie had taken no
action on my request to have Mae work with me on the cellar
re-organization/clean up. I’d had Bret help me move some things around
one late afternoon and it came to me that, since business was slow, I might get Bret to help me again. When he returned from lunch I
approached him and after a ‘hard sell’ got him to join me. We’d
previously cleared a path though all the stuff that took us to the front
of the building. That had given us access to some old wooden file
cabinets. I’d opened one to find copper plates mounted on wood that had
been used to print pictures. We hadn’t time that day to check on the
others so that was the first step. I fully expected to find more of the
same but was disappointed. The one Bret opened was filled with
papers that had been randomly stuffed in the drawers and he couldn't figure out what they were. My first one held a
few leather bound legal size books that I thought might've been minutes from Board of Trustees meetings. In both cases it seemed obvious
that whoever had filled the cabinets had not organized the contents. We tackled
the other two and in one found what appeared to be a “Day Timer” for
the period… the late 1800’s, along with some personal items. It was
strange, like we’d opened a time capsule. Intrigued, we wasted time
trying to read some of what had been written but the hand writing of those
times was quite ‘flowery’ and we struggled a bit with it. When I heard
Hobie’s voice behind me it made me jump.
After showing him some of our
discoveries he started digging in to some of the boxes. What I found
particularly interesting was that back in days around the turn of the
century they used wooden crates and there were a lot of them. Hobie had
us carry a few out to better light and we all took a look. Mostly hand
written ledger cards, Hobie decided that because of their age (pre 1900) there was no point in keeping them.
That was a major step in the process. When the bank was constructed it had been heated with coal. When they converted to oil heat it was too costly
to remove the fire box of the furnace. Since the bank always had a lot
of sensitive paperwork as trash they would incinerate it in the old
furnace. So, in just the short period of time Hobie had been down there
with us we had a clear direction as to what to do with some of the stuff
that was there… burn it!
Hobie took one of the hand written
journals upstairs when he left and Bret and I started looking for boxes
with hand written ledger cards. We actually worked up a sweat lugging them
to the furnace area for Mike, the messenger/custodian, to burn. I don’t
remember how long we stayed down there but when we headed back up to the
banking floor Lorie was giving the ‘word’ that they we all “in proof”. I remember that we’d cleared a space of about 10 feet square. We’d
also located a very old desk in the far corner of the space we were
working in and had set a goal of getting to it the next time we were
down there. We’d decided that we needed a table to work from as both of
our backs were hurting from bending over. I was pleased with the unexpected progress that
had been made and enjoyed working, shoulder to shoulder, with Bret.
I
honestly thought that after Hobie saw what the cellar project was all
about he’d give me the ‘OK’ to continue on with it with Mae as my
helper. He’d already asked me about Bret and his availability after work
and had been told about his wife working and having to be home to watch
his kids. I was puzzled about why a decision was being delayed. With
the results of the day as an impetus I finally made the decision to
‘push’ and ask him again. I certainly didn’t look like a bank officer as
I walked into his area what with my tie off, sleeves rolled up and dirt
on my shirt. I brought him up to date telling him we’d moved about a
dozen crates filled with ledger cards into the furnace room ready to be
burned. He seemed to look pleased so I pressed on telling him I was
excited to see how much progress we’d made in such a short time. I tried
to ‘slide’ into the request to continue on but by using Mae as my helper. The expression
on his faced changed immediately and then said he thought the work was too physical
for a woman. I’ve always had a short fuse when hearing something
stupid… and his reason was… stupid. I can’t do justice to Mae in
describing her. I’ve tried in earlier posts but the thing that had
impressed me the most was she was not someone to be labeled. In her mind
she could do anything and all she wanted was a chance to prove it. On
everything that had been thrown her way since she was hired she’d
excelled at and I wanted to take advantage of that desire. So… I stuck
my neck out and proceeded to ‘sell’ her to Hobie. Long story short… he
wanted to talk with her, one on one, before he’d give his approval. As
I’ve posted before, “little victories” was what I was after and this was
one of them. By the time I left for home not only had Hobie spoken
with Mae but he'd given me the approval to pay her. However, it was not to be at an overtime rate when she stayed after the bank closed. For when we were to
work on a Saturday it was flat rate but I couldn’t hire her sister. I
didn’t argue with him even though I knew it would upset Mae. When I told
her the next morning I thought she might decide not to do it but by
noon she agreed and we decided to start on Saturday. The problem for me
was in how to tell Elle that I’d be at work for a couple of upcoming
Saturday mornings.
To be continued…
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