People like you.
That’s what George said in kitchens and barns and church basements all over the county in 1967. When he was asking people to trust him with their savings. Farmers and shopkeepers and widows with coffee cans full of money.
Put your money in a bank that’s owned by people like you.
He meant it as a compliment. The highest one he knew.
Fifty-eight years later, a young man in a blue suit said those same three words to me. And he meant them as an insult.
And now he says them every day. To farmers and cleaning ladies and young mothers and old widows in dead men’s hats.
And he means them the way George did.
That’s the thing about words. They mean whatever the person behind the glass decides they mean.
I’m glad I went to the bank in my gardening clothes that day.
