George was careful. Lord, he was careful. He read every loan application three times. He drove out to every farm. He walked the fields. He looked at the cows.
But he was careful about the right things.
He never once looked at somebody’s boots.
I worked there too, at the beginning.
I was a teller for eleven years. I sat at the window where Shelly sits now. I counted money and stamped deposit slips and handed out peppermints from a glass bowl.
The peppermint bowl was my idea.
“People get nervous at banks,” I told George. “Give them something sweet.”
After Sarah was born, our only child, I stayed home. But I never really left. I baked pies for every bank event. I knew every customer. I sat in on board meetings when George wanted a second opinion.
And I was there in 1985.
The farm crisis.
If you didn’t live through it, you can’t understand it. Interest rates went through the roof. Land prices crashed. Farmers who’d borrowed money in the good years couldn’t pay it back. All over Iowa, all over the Midwest, banks were calling in loans. Foreclosing on farms that had been in families for a hundred years.
