Bank Job

I scribble in cramped, hard-to-decipher notes: I’m writing this in the parking lot outside the optometrist’s office near Sutter Creek on February 18. We’re on our way back from the post office and I’ve been asking Lydia why there are so many lawyers, bankers, and insurance professionals in Rotary Clubs. She says it’s because they are used to asking a lot of questions, and this makes them successful Rotary leaders.

She complains that some of the President-elects left the recent president elect training seminar in San Jose early, believing (apparently) that the only sessions remaining—the question-and-answer periods—were less important. Well, how else can you learn if you don’t ask questions?

For some wild and spontaneous reason, I ask for a job application at the bank, this morning. Both Linda and Carolyn look at me strangely. I tell them I need something useful to do. Here I am at age fifty seven and I’ve never actually applied for a job by filling out a piece of paper. I’ve been a CEO, a President, teacher, and mostly an scientist-artist, but I’ve never just applied for a job in the most ordinary of ways. I extract the piece of paper from my coat pocket and scan the questions.

“Major reason for wanting to apply for this job.”

“I want to work in the office with four attractive women and learn how to print money?” I fold up the application paper and shove it into the trash can.

Over at home port, the local B.K., the atmosphere is filled with familiar chatter of Amadorians—citizens of Amador county. I recall that the people, young or old, in the McDonalds in Gonzales, Texas, were not so exuberant. Perhaps they were more reserved?

Lydia tells me that the line ran out of the door and down the sidewalk last Sunday because of the exceptionally large ski crowd. Well, nothing like that in Gonzales, Texas. Maybe a good fishing day when the spillway opens at a local dam brings out the crowds? My father used to get excited about dam openings. Boxes of lures, poles, and buckets of minnows would be stuffed into the trunk, and off we’d go fishing. Gonzales was the best dam fishing in Texas.