“Put your money in a bank that knows you,” he told them. “A bank that’s owned by people like you.”
People like you.
That’s what he said. That’s exactly what he said. In kitchens and barns and church basements all over the county.
It took a year and a half. But they came.
Farmers put in five hundred dollars. A thousand. Two thousand. Old Mrs. Jorgensen, who’d been widowed in the war, put in her entire savings. Six thousand dollars, in cash, in a cardboard box tied with string.
“George Whitaker,” she said, setting the box on our kitchen table, “if you lose this, I will haunt you.”
He didn’t lose it.
In August of 1968, we broke ground on the empty lot at the corner of Main and Second. The newspaper sent a photographer. George and I put on our church clothes and stood in the dirt holding shovels.
