Talman's was huge in the hood. Benjamin F Bohac was a revered name in Gage Park, sort of a Benjamin Franklin, a penny saved is a penny earned. Thrift, thrift, young man, that is a better way to go than west. There may be gold in California but you will not find a solid brick bungalow in that land of earthquake and drought.
I remember going up to the counter I could barely see over and pushing my account book to the imposing teller who looked something up and in perfect handwriting wrote in the interest that I had earned in the last quarter and then totalled it to give me like seventeen cents more than I had the last quarter. I was getting rich.
Fridays it was jammed with folks with paychecks, more money to go into the account, maybe by January you would be able to pay for that new dormer to make the attic rooms more pleasant for the kids, so they could study harder and get into college and become a doctor or lawyer or whatever. Moving on up. The American dream.
But it was not a bank, it was a savings and loan, a kind of wheeler dealer form of bank, well not Talman's who was interested only in giving solid citizens mortgages to buy homes and loans to fix up those homes, but those other guys, they engaged in all sorts of money shenanigans, and when the blade came down on their necks it came down on Talman's too.
I've had bugs before, mostly spiders. High rise buildings create updrafts and those carry bugs right into the webs of high living spiders who live the easy life up in the sky. I've had dragon flies, and rarely a butterfly. One nice thing about life in the sky is no house flies and no mosquitos. I've had morning glories for years but I don't think bees are attracted to them. They like to walk the prairies of the eye of the sunflower, and I believe this summer's bumper crop is what brought them here.
When I was speaking of fun in the sense of it being less fun the older you get, I was speaking of things like sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and all the discomfort that comes along with pursuing them. I certainly didn't mean stuff like gentleman scientist fun where you are basically just fiddling with stuff in the privacy and comfort of your own home. Fiddling with a fiddle seems more like comfort to me, but not skateboarding and unicycling which seem a lot more like sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I remember the subject of unicycles coming up during our Friday night seminars, and I remember a little juggling experiment that left The Owner's oranges the worst for wear.
Well you all know that I am a good liberal and like to spread my kumbaya to all god's creatures, but I have to admit that I had a little thrill thinking of all that hornet poison coursing through the highways and byways of the Kingdom of Hornets, remembering the morning when I woke to find aphids (horrible insects who are born fertile) covering the green expanse of my garden.
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