CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter…
THE MYSTERY OF BANKS [M, 5-7-18]
I got my first car loan
when I was 19 years old, from the First National Bank in Oakland City, my home
town. I was going to school at IU and preaching at three little churches, 16 to
35 miles from Bloomington, I needed reliable transportation. My
brother-in-law’s 1947 Oldsmobile, which I had bought from him for $50 while the
Navy had him and my sister stationed in Antigua, was barely limping along,
using a quart of oil every 50 miles.
The banker in Oakland City
knew my family was poor, but I had checking and savings accounts in that bank.
Neither ever had much money, but I was a customer. He took a risk. I got a loan
to buy a used green 1952 Chevy.
From that time on I got
lots of loans from bankers, for cars and houses. I never questioned the
existence of banks, though—how they got there. They were just there, on the
corner, like the police station or the school. I knew they were a business, but
it never occurred to me that somebody owned them. I mean, they were sort of
like the government, just there, a public service, doing their thing so life
could go on.
I did not find out about
bank owners, I’m embarrassed to say, until I was in my late 30s. My excuse is
that while I knew bankers, and even had some as church members, I was not in
the social class to know bank owners.
Until I met Vic Pavlenko.
Vic and I were doctoral
students together. His parents had been quite wealthy, his father the Caterpillar
sales director for Russia and vicinity, and that’s a pretty big vicinity. [1] Vic’s
parents were killed together in a car wreck. Vic and his brother each inherited
a whole lot of money.
Vic was a Lutheran pastor.
He used his inheritance to start and fund a regional ministry for poor rural
people in the Dakotas. He brother bought a bank.
When Vic said that as he
told us his story, when he said “My brother bought a bank,” I had my financial
Eureka moment: “So that’s where banks come from; they have owners, just like flower
shops.”
It’s like pulling back the
curtain in The Wizard of Oz. There are some things we’re better off not
knowing.
JRMcF
1] An interesting side
note is that Yul Brynner was Mr. Pavlenko’s Mongolia salesman before he went
into acting.
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