A friend of mine insists on carrying nothing but $50 bills. He thinks he's Rich Uncle Pennybags.
Naturally, when he reimbursed me for some expenses from our recent trip to Dayton, I wound up with two $50 bills, which no one wants to accept in payment. And I'm absent-minded; losing a $5 bill is one thing, but losing a $50 is quite another.
So on my lunch break one day this week, I went across the street to a branch of a Monroeville-based institution that I will refer to as "Farkbail Stank." "Could I have this changed to something smaller, please?" I asked.
"We don't make change for people who don't have accounts," he said. "It's our policy."
"You've got to be kidding me," I said.
"Would you like to open an account here?" he asked.
"Maybe," I said, "if you make change I'll think about it. Otherwise, no, never."
I walked out with two $20 bills, one $10 bill, and a cloud of dark, muttered imprecations.
. . .
When did banks decide that their mission is to make life as unpleasant as possible?
When I was a kid during the Reagan administration, it was a treat to go to the office of Union National Bank of Pittsburgh a few blocks from my house. I'd put in my birthday or Christmas money, and they'd stamp my passbook and give me a lollipop. I felt Very Grown Up.
The idea was that the bank would turn me into a loyal customer, and some day, when I was old enough to drive, shave, and go deeply into debt, they'd be able to sell me other products.
The bank office is now a Family Dollar, and I don't know if little kids are still welcome to open passbook savings accounts. There are probably minimum balance requirements that make it prohibitive. Anyway, considering how much time banks spend intimidating adults, I doubt children are welcome.
When a cow-orker or friend has a baby, I buy the child a U.S. Savings Bond. I figure that when the bond matures, the kid will be the right age to want to spend the money on something. For years, this was straightforward, but the last time I tried, one bank (a large New England-based thrift I will call "Shitizens Frank") refused to sell me a bond, because I wasn't a depositor.
That's right: They refused to sell me a United States savings bond.
If these policies are designed to encourage people to become a customer, I'm afraid it had the opposite effect: If "Shitizens" was the last bank on the planet, I'd give my money to a homeless guy.
. . .
Some of these outfits screw you even if you've never heard of them. I got a letter this week from a bank in Florida. It turns out they own a check-clearing service --- if you write a check, their company makes sure you have sufficient money.
The letter informed me "they were recently victimized" by an employee who stole 2.2 million accounts. Mine happens to be among them. While they have "no indication" any fraud has occurred (yet), they suggest I "might" want to change my account numbers and put a fraud alert on my credit reports.
At my expense, of course.
Rest assured, the form letter said, they are "taking steps to make sure we are not victimized again."
If they're the victims, why does my rectum hurt?
. . .
Being a long-time customer of a bank doesn't protect you from pain. When my bank was a savings and loan, most services were free and the tellers were helpful (while in college, I made a dog's breakfast of my checking account --- and I can remember an employee at the Homestead office sitting down with me to straighten out the mess).
Now, everything costs money. It bugged me when they stopped sending back canceled checks, but I was assured I could still order a copy at any time, for free. They recently instituted a $5 "research fee" for each canceled check.
Since the IRS now demands that taxpayers have "proof" of charitable contributions like church offerings, ordering canceled checks gets costly in a hurry --- I know someone who was audited and spent $800 getting copies of canceled checks from the bank.
I also have a line of credit with this bank. It used to be tied to the prime rate, but recently they yanked it up to 12.99 percent APR. That's more than my credit card. When I complained to a loan officer, he suggested I pay off the bank with the credit card.
Or maybe I should pull everything out of that rotten fershlugginer bank, which I will be doing this summer.
. . .
The problem is, where do I go? I've had pleasant dealings over the years with Compass Federal Savings Bank in Wilmerding, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. But they only have one office and they don't offer online or telephone banking, so they're not terribly convenient unless you live in North Versailles or "the Valley."
I have several friends in management at large banks. I asked one of them if I should go to his institution. He frankly suggested I would be better off at a credit union.
Like Compass Bank, limited convenience is a problem with most credit unions. (I see that Parkview Community FCU, located over near Renzie Park, has online banking now.) Still, if going to a credit union keeps me from getting smacked around a couple of times a month by one bank or another, I may put up with any inconvenience.
Come to think of it, where did Rich Uncle Pennybags do his banking? He always seems happy.
Maybe I'll look for a bank somewhere between Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens. I just hope they haven't built a hotel there instead.
If you were around 35 years ago this week and had a radio tuned to "Solid Rock'n Gold" WIXZ (1360) or "Musicradio" KQV (1410), you were hearing this song a lot.
It's a song that some people consider one of the worst pop songs of all time.
I'm talking about Gilbert O'Sullivan's immortal classic, "Alone Again (Naturally)."
I've had it stuck in my head for days. A listener requested it last Sunday night and I played it, and while I wouldn't say it's a favorite, it's really not that bad. In fact, it's pretty damned good. In 2004 a reviewer for the BBC called it "a nugget of three-minute perfection," and O'Sullivan (that was his real last name; his manager dubbed him "Gilbert") really does pack more details and emotion into the record than some novelists fit into a whole book.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the song (I envy you), the singer has just been left at the altar by his fianceé and is being pitied by the people who came to the wedding:
Left standing in the lurch,
At a church with people saying:
"My God, that's tough, she stood him up
No point in us remaining.
We may as well go home."
As I did, on my own:
Alone, again (naturally)
He goes onto run through all of the other "hearts broken in this world," wrapping up with his parents:
I remember I cried when my father died,
Never wishing to hide the tears.
And at 65 years old,
My mother (God rest her soul)
Couldn't understand why the only man
She had ever loved had been taken.
Despite encouragement from me,
No words were ever spoken.
And when she passed away,
I cried and cried all day:
Alone, again (naturally).
("Everyone wants to know if it's and autobiographical song," O'Sullivan said. "Well, the fact of the matter is, I didn't know my father very well, and he wasn't a good father anyway. He didn't treat my mother very well.")
I know it seems like a terribly depressing song, but there's a tongue-in-cheek quality to either the lyrics or the way O'Sullivan delivers them, or possibly both.
Some how we know that O'Sullivan isn't really going to "throw himself off" a building, and he knows he's wallowing in self-pity. But we all occasionally get into a mood where we sit and feel sorry for ourselves.
As the Beeb's unnamed reviewer says, "It sounds sickly and self-indulgent, but Gilbert's skill was using humour and the sweetest melodies to make us swallow the bitterest pills."
The melody really is sweet. The record suffers a little bit from the heavy production that plagues a lot of 1970s pop --- the overdubbed strings, the reverb on O'Sullivan's voice --- but even that's not enough to wreck the pleasantness of the chord changes. Together with the unconventional internal rhymes of the lyrics ("I remember I cried when my father died," or "Couldn't understand why the only man") it's a catchy song.
And man, did it catch on. "Alone Again (Naturally)" was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic (O'Sullivan was Irish); while I don't have any WIXZ charts, according to Jeff Roteman's KQV website, it was the number 1 song on KQV for three straight weeks, finally displaced in the last week of August by Argent's "Hold Your Head Up."
Where "Alone Again (Naturally)" is subtle and novel and creative, "Hold Your Head Up" is about as clever and sensitive as a brick in the face. What a letdown!
At some point, it became fashionable among the rock cognoscenti to dismiss songs like "Alone Again (Naturally)" as "the crap that killed AM radio." But if it hadn't been written in 1972, and if Ben Folds or Wilco or some other favorite of the alt-rock crowd released it today, it would be getting heavy airplay on WYEP-FM and anywhere else pretentious music snobs gather. Pretty soon Volkswagen would have a commercial with "Alone Again (Naturally)" on the soundtrack.
But I digress.
This has nothing particularly to do with the Mon-Yough area, but after all of the heavy, serious topics that have infested the Almanac lately, I thought we needed something light. (Like a song about death and abandonment.)
Besides, it's been stuck in my head for more than a week, and I thought you deserved to live with it for a while.
Pulling stunts like this is why I'm alone, again. (Naturally.)
The river of crocodile tears being cried by certain state legislators and politicians over the fate of Duquesne High School is truly moving. The outpouring of grief reminds me of the words of the great Tom Lehrer:
It's fun to eulogize / The people you despise / As long as you don't let 'em in your schools.
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