Men were losing everything. Some of them couldn’t take it. That winter, three farmers in our county took their own lives. I went to all three funerals.
The big banks were foreclosing as fast as they could.
George refused.
He sat in the back room of Farmers & Merchants with the board of directors, night after night, fighting. The other directors wanted to call in the loans. The bank examiners from Des Moines wanted him to call in the loans. Everybody said if he didn’t call in the loans, the bank would go under.
“If I call in those loans,” George said, “half this county loses its farms. And then who are we a bank for?”
They fought for weeks. I heard them through the wall sometimes, when I brought coffee. Shouting. Pounding on the table.
In the end, George did something I’ll never forget.
He mortgaged our house.
