ANCIENT HISTORY

The first check to clear the Security State Bank, dated Oct. 8th, 1941. It was for $971.97 to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

I am the daughter of a banker. He got the idea for a bank and organized the  PTB to make it happen in 1941.

My father—John Corcoran, Jr.—was the four-term County Treasurer of Buchanan County, Iowa in Independence, Iowa. Dad didn’t win the post the normal way. He ran as a Democrat in the still-hugely-Republican state of Iowa and lost to the Republican  opponent.

I think the Democrats drafted Dad in the first place because he had been Deputy Sheriff under August Hamelmann. Therefore, people knew him and liked him. He had some pretty hairy stories about being sent to the First Ward Park to quell a gathering of Depression-era men who were considering breaking into a local grocery store. During the Depression, when he was the cashier for the Fairbank Bank  he was told to sit up all night with a shotgun  to prevent “a run on the bank.”

Dad lost in that election, but they called him up afterwards and said, “John, your opponent died before he could be sworn in. Do you want the job?” He said yes, and that put a Democrat in charge of Buchanan County’s money, which, given recent experiences at the state and national levels, was a very good idea for Iowa and the United States. (But I digress).

I worked in the bank in my teen-aged years, primarily helping prepare the monthly statements by reconciling checks, which were filed in a large vault with a time lock—a vault that I once got locked inside when people forgot about me. (I won a radio competition for the person calling in from the oddest location.)  As I recall, that is how I got out of the vault when they (inadvertently) locked me inside the vault. I also know that Dad’s ill-fated attempt to single-handedly lift a safe (!) semi-crippled him for life. His temporary paralysis led to him becoming one of the very first patients to have spinal fusion surgery at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, back in the forties, before I was born. It was that risky surgery or be paralyzed for life.  Dad chose the risky  new surgery, but he had back trouble from then on and lost some feeling in his feet (which meant that he couldn’t tell when he had stepped off a curb and his foot was on the ground). Still, thank heaven for advances in back surgery!

Dad, during his County Treasurer days,  knew of a bank on the corner of the main street and the major intersection, right across the street from the Farmers’ State Bank, that had gone under during the Depression. It had a rather grand bank vault within it, already installed. He correctly guaged the temper of the times that a second bank could make a go of it.  He set about finding out how one would start a second bank in Independence, Iowa. It involved getting hold of the bank examiners and bringing them to town and getting investors. The year was 1941. He was 39 years old.

I offer this ancient history up to show that I have a fond view of banks, in general. Or did have. My enthusiasm for dealing with modern-day banks is  diminished by the failure to provide human assistance. The days of the friendly cashier assisting you with a smile seem like life on a different planet. Things are not the same,are they, America? If the Pope could get his information updated manually, why can’t I? And why is it going to take six weeks? The credit card (which took a while to arrive at all) requires that you spend $1,000 in the first 90 days. Well, it is looking like it may be  at leaast 30 days before the BoA can “activate” it, so I’d like an extension on that, BoA. (The spending of $1,000 means you get a $200 cash kick-back.)

Dad. my husband Craig, and me on my 33rd birthday (7/23/1978) at the Axtell/Alerton house in Rush Park on the west edge of Independence, now long gone.

THE BANK OF AMERICA CREDIT CARD: The plot goes on

As mentioned in one of the previous installmentsn, I bit on the new credit BoA card. I was told it would take a while to reach me by mail. You had to spend $1,000 in the first 90 days. At the rate things are going, half of the 90 days will be “up” before I am able to activate the card. It had no annual fee and gave percentages back on such necessities as groceries and gas.

I was apprised of the card’s progress through the mail. I was sent numerous updates on when the card would arrive by e-mail. (Which struck me as particularly egregious because I was not sent numerous statements about my literary account’s standing during seven years of time. When the bot kept trying to send “verification” codes to a land line (which I thought we had updated during my first in-person visit on June 13th), I asked for a phone call (didn’t come) or an e-mail to my old AOL account (didn’t come) and then girded for the 7-hour drive, which is apparently the best treatment a loyal customer for over 23 years can expect. I noted that the Pope threatened to take his business elsewhere, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this bank would pay me to take my business elsewhere, writing me off as a fossil who isn’t worth the time or effort to help her in a user friendly manner—UNLESS she drives herself 14 hours into Chicago in the months of both June AND July.

The card ultimately arrived, and, like all credit cards, it has to be activated. But, unlike the other credit cards I have in my billfold, you couldn’t simply make a phone call to a number. I tried that. Here is what happened, as I have described it for Felipe in one (of two) of the actual SNAIL MAIL letters I have had to resort to sending to 430 W. Roosevelt Road in Chicago. That seems to be the only way I can (maybe) communicate with the staff. I did get a brief 10-second conversation with Felipe (who bailed on one of his current in-bank desperate customers) and asked him if my FIRST snail mail letter had reached him. It had not.

“Great,” I said grimly.

My Mom (Sadie Corcoran) and Dad (John Corcoran, Jr.) obscured by the head of Doc Leehey, who was, I think, my father’s cousin and, for many years, the only doctor in Independence, Iowa.

DIRECTIONS

Felipe—trying to save the day—abandoned a customer in the store briefly. He told me to call 800-276-9939 to activate my brand new BoA credit card, which did arrive (unlike my reports on my literary account in the years 2019-2026.)

Here is what I have written to Felipe, which I will snail mail tomorrow, as no one has seen fit to give me an e-mail address for the one employee who seems to have it together. [THAT would have been nice, but no.]

“Dear Felipe:

  1. I called the number you gave me to activate my band new BoA credit card: 800-276-9939.
  2. The bot answered and asked for “the account you are calling about.” I was not really calling about an account; I was calling to try to activate a brand new credit card, but, since it will pull against my personal banking account, I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that this meant the account that the new credit card would draw against.
  3. I put the account number of my personal account in five (5) times.
  4. FIVE TIMES the bot said: “I couldn’t find that account.”
  5. Then it hung up on me.
  6. My next in-person drive to the Roosevelt Road/Canal Street location is for July 15th. That will be a full month after my FIRST in-person meeting for which I also had to drive 7 hours. I was not planning on being back in July that early, but I’m not the Pope and I don’t know the CEO of Bank of America. (Brian Moneghan. He lives near Boston and may be worth $349 million.)Thumbnail for Brian Moynihan
  7. Stay tuned for the next installment.
  8. And—by the way—I’ve been blogging on WeeklyWilson.com since February of 2007 using WordPress.  I was using a computer in my workplace as far back as 1984, when I networked with One Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.. on a WANG PC to receive information for a book I was writing for Performance Learning Systems, Inc., of Emerson, New Jersey, entitled “Training the Teacher As A Champion.” The estimate of the number of people who were online and working with computers in 1984 ago was  300, worldwide.