Counter Checks
You know how when you look through binoculars backwards everything is smaller and far away? That’s how reflecting on your life sometimes seems to me. We all remember our past with a certain gauzy nostalgia, that simpler life we all reflect on and bore our children with. The same as our parents did us. In other words: the good old days.
I grew up on a rural farm, in a rural town, in a rural state. It is somewhat remote, even today. Back in the mid-1900s it was more so. Lenox is located 45 minutes from any Interstate highway and 2 hours from the closest major city. Until the early 1970s the highways around our part of the world were old, narrow and winding. Interstate 35 running out of Des Moines and south to Kansas City ended at the Iowa border. There was a 12-mile gap that was connected via a 2-lane highway, which wound through a couple of small towns before it re-connected with I-35. It wasn’t until 1978 that I-35 was finally connected. All this I write so you the reader can begin to understand how many of the inventions and conventions of post WWII had not completely caught up with our little town as late as 1970.
I was three years old in 1956 when my mother took a job in town. My father was a farmer but not a prosperous one. With four children (my little sister would arrive as a surprise 6 years later) we needed the income. I can still remember Mom going around to the gas station and grocery on Saturdays after she was paid. I don’t know how much she was paid but it surely wasn’t much. She would take $20 and pay off what had been charged the previous week on our accounts.
The many merchants in town ran nearly all their businesses on charge accounts. This is of course before the days of ATMs and charge cards. As such it was not unheard of for an unfortunate family who incurred too much debt to leave town in the dead of night. The many merchants would then be stuck with the debts, unfortunate for them as well. This remembers the many businesses that every small town supported back before the big box stores and the Internet. Our town was comprised of 1200 souls, more or less. The outlying farms added quite a few more. The 1960s was the heyday of the small farmer in the Midwest. Nearly every square mile supported 6 to 8 families. Those families came to towns like Lenox for all their shopping, groceries, gas, clothing, and produce. At one time Lenox had several gas stations, 3 groceries, a men’s clothing and women’s clothing stores, 4 bars, an auction barn, and a healthy bank.
Well, that was then, times change. Today the vast majority of people have moved off the farms and into the larger towns and cities. Most farmers farm several hundred to several thousand acres each and the small farmer is a relic of bygone days. So too are the many merchants that were supported by the local economies. Today it is an easy ride to the WalMart or even easier just log on the computer and have items delivered to your door. So it goes.
I do recall one custom that has disappeared from the landscape of America: the counter check. If one went anywhere up to 50 miles from home they rarely carried a checkbook. My father might drop in to a tavern say in Corning, 11 miles from our farm. If he ran out of cash and wanted to stay longer he’d merely point to the back of the bar and ask the bartender to write a check on the Lenox Bank. Stores generally kept a handful of check blanks from 10 – 20 banks in their immediate vicinity for everyday use by patrons from other communities.
I can still remember the very loud discussions that would ensue when Mom would balance the checkbook and express her opinion on the stack of $5, $10, and $20 checks that would show up from around the area. The man behind the bar would write out the amount and Dad would “sign” the check. Generally his signature was barely legible, attesting to his lack of sobriety when signing. Yeah, nostalgia has its limits.
