Friday, May 28, 2010

A Mysterious Stranger

In my “inquiring minds want to know,” mode, I recently wandered outside of Michiana to be a stranger in a strange land: southern Indiana. Strapping myself into the car for a 36 hour, 560-mile round-trip, I headed south: South Bend to Indianapolis— backside-and-brain-numbingly boring; around that Indianapolis raceway, 465 – an adrenalin rush; past the Oliver Winery at Bloomington – charming; then southward into the cool, green, hilly, twisty-road Hoosier National Forest area – a true delight. Then, take a right, head toward Loogootee and you’re in the area where, as my father used to say, “There are small towns thicker than the hairs on a dog’s back.” There’s Alfordsville, Haysville, Jasper and just down the pike a piece, my destination, Huntingburg. Where? Huntingburg: home of a small group of banks in southern Indiana.

Rewind to my youth when I would visit my grandmother in another of those hairs on that dog’s back: Holland. Holland had a bank. Grandmother owned some stock in that bank. In her will, she left that stock to her children. My father was one of those children. In the usual way, his shares of that stock came to my sister and to me. Those shares also came with the bonus round of annual reports, proxy forms and invitations to the annual shareholders meeting. Each year, I say to my sister, “Let’s go to this someday.” Well, someday arrived. She’s retired; I’m retired, and we both can impulsively jump into the car and drive many miles to an evening meeting in another of those hairs: Huntingburg.

They say that there are only two plots in novels: someone takes a trip or a stranger comes to town. There’s truth to this. Test it. Think about novels that you know. One, or sometimes both, of these scenarios is present in the plot. Although my trip was just a short story, not a novel, these elements were front and center in Huntingburg. My sister and I were on a trip, and Boy! Were we ever the strangers who had come to town!

“Who are your people, Dear?” that’s the quintessential question that people in the South ask when trying to determine just how you might fit into the social scheme. In Huntingburg, they didn’t phrase it quite that way, but their “welcoming” chats made it obvious that they sure did wonder how the two women who weren’t known townies, or current, or former employees of the bank fit into the picture. These Burgers knew our names and that we are shareholders; how we came to be so was the puzzle. Not to slight them, but these little banks are not a glamour stock that that folks are queuing up for. (As an aside, that’s too bad. It’s a good, solid performer in that Midwestern way: slow but steady. This little bank corporation makes money – even over the last couple of difficult-for-the-industry years. Not great pots of money, but steady income and growth: just what everyone ought to be queuing up for. I would tell you the name of this bank, but I’m not licensed to give financial advice, so to say it probably would be a violation of some Federal regulation. Sorry.)

So . . . just why did the mystery ladies, the strangers who came to town, bother to come to town? Certainly not for that long drive. Not even for the lovely buffet and strong drink offered after the meeting. Two hundred and eighty miles each way is a bit of a drive just for snacks. The answer is the bridge generation between our grandmother and my sister and me: our father. As he did, we just like to see how things work. You look at it in motion, you take it apart, you try to determine the function of each part, and then, if you’re lucky, when you reassemble it, you don’t have any parts left over. Inquiring minds just want to know. And, if to gain the information, you have to be the stranger who comes to town, that just adds to the mystery.

Broadcast by Jeanette Saddler Taylor on May 28, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
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