George Singleton: The business of banking sure has changed

George Buster Singleton

(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere in Time.” The column below, which was titled “The business of banking sure has changed,” was originally published in the Aug. 27, 1992 edition of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)

I often think about how much things today have changed. We take so much for granted in this day and age; it causes me to wonder just how we made it through the rough days of the Great Depression.

Today, we do our banking mostly from the window of our automobiles. Or if we should, by chance, need a certain amount of cash, we can just go by the Connexion and insert our card – the money we want falls out in our hands.

And this can be done any time of the day or night. We deposit our salaries into our bank accounts without ever seeing them. Money can be sent around the world on a moment’s notice. Truly, the age of the computer has done wonders for all mankind.

In the area where I grew up, there was only one bank. Sweet Water State Bank was the largest and the smallest bank around. It was also the only bank around.

Small country banks

Farmers used this small country bank for their money needs in the farming communities of the surrounding countryside. Getting the chance to go in the small bank was almost like going into another world for a small country boy like myself. But the time was soon to come when I was to make the trip to the bank for the first time – all by myself.

It was cotton-picking time around the countryside; almost all the local farmers had made a good cotton crop, and the fields were white with opened cotton. This was before the time of cotton-picking machinery that could go down two or three rows and pick everything at once. All the cotton was picked by hand. One could pass the snow-white fields and see pickers pulling cotton and putting it in long sacks that hung from their shoulders by long straps. Take it from me, this was work in its most primitive form.

One morning as my family sat at the breakfast table, it was announced that I was going to be sent to the bank at Sweet Water. I was almost seven at the time; I thought I could handle anything along about this time in life, but I was not ready for this. My older brothers had work to do, and they had to stay close by to help handle the cotton that was being picked.

Each sack, when filled, had to be weighed and the correct pounds credited to the right picker. At this time, I was the only one available for the journey to the bank because I was too small to do much work.

Catch the horse

When breakfast was over, I was ordered to catch the horse I claimed as mine and get ready for the trip. My father told me to go to the bank at Sweet Water and see Mr. Vice, the president of the bank.

I was to tell Mr. Vice that my father needed some money to pay the cotton pickers. He wanted $150: $50 in five-dollar bills, $50 in one-dollar bills and $50 in halves and quarters. I was to tell Mr. Vice that when my father came to town, and he didn’t say when, he would come by and settle up with him.

A very nervous and uneasy young boy rode the five or so miles to the town of Sweet Water. As I tied my mount to a fence near the bank, I was frightened like I had never been before. Almost unable to speak, I slowly made my way into the small bank building. As I approached the cashier, I managed to get the words out that I wanted to see the bank president, Mr. Vice. A smiling lady stepped to a nearby door and spoke something to someone inside an adjoining small room. Out stepped the bank president.

“What can I do for you, young man?” spoke the president of Sweet Water State Bank. After much stammering and studdering, I answered, frightened and shaking, and gave him the message my father had instructed me to give him.

Reaching into his pocket, the bank president pulled out a nickel and handed it to me. “Take this and go down to Lewis Bros. Store and get you a stick of candy. When you come back, I will have the money ready for you,” Mr. Vice said.

Stick of candy

A much-relieved young boy dashed to the door of the bank. Upon reaching the store down the street, I purchased a long stick of candy that had peanut butter blended in the candy stick.

When I returned to the bank, Mr. Vice was waiting with the money. He had placed it in two heavy paper bags. I had never seen so much money before. I walked outside and jumped aboard my waiting steed.

The smiling bank president handed up the paper sacks with the money inside. No note was signed; the money was not counted. It was given only on the word of a man who had always placed honor and trust foremost in all his dealings. No date was mentioned when this country farmer from a nearby community would come in and settle the transaction. Only the honor of these two men was the binder in this agreement.

Happy and excited, I made the return trip home, daring to peep from time to time into the heavy paper sacks that contained more money than I could imagine existed.

Between peeps, I licked the most wonderful-tasting candy stick that could have been found on this planet anywhere. A busy day of serious banking business can play havoc on the nerves of an almost seven-year-old boy. That bank president certainly knew what he was doing when he prescribed a stick of peanut-butter candy to calm my system and settle my nerves.

(Singleton, the author of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of 79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime resident of Monroeville, he was born to Vincent William Singleton and Frances Cornelia Faile Singleton, during a late-night thunderstorm, on Dec. 14, 1927 in Marengo County, graduated from Sweet Water High School in 1946, served as a U.S. Marine paratrooper in the Korean War, worked as a riverboat deckhand, lived for a time among Apache Indians, was bitten at least twice by venomous snakes, moved to Monroe County on June 28, 1964 and served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from June 28, 1964 to Dec. 14, 1987. He was promoted from the enlisted ranks to warrant officer in May 1972. For years, Singleton’s columns, titled “Monroe County history – Did you know?” and “Somewhere in Time” appeared in The Monroe Journal, and he wrote a lengthy series of articles about Monroe County that appeared in Alabama Life magazine. It’s believed that his first column appeared in the March 25, 1971 edition of The Monroe Journal. He also helped organize the Monroe County Museum and Historical Society and was also a past president of that organization. He is buried in Pineville Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and all of Singleton’s other columns are available to the public through the microfilm records at the Monroe County Public Library in Monroeville. Singleton’s columns are presented here each week for research and scholarship purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work and memory alive.)