A Gentler Time

I've been digging through some old files at work, and darned if I didn't discover today that phishing predates the internet by a long, long time - who knew?

From the monthly newsletter of a certain Texas Chamber of Commerce, Vol 3. No. 4, April 1968

National BB Bureau Warns of “Bank Examiner” Swindle

The National Better Business Bureau warned today that the so-called “bank examiner” swindle – a bizarre con game widely used a few years ago to bilk elderly widows of their savings – has cropped up again in some areas of the country.

NBBB said the most recent case involved an elderly La Salle, Illinois, woman who was defrauded of $1,800 by a fast-talking con man who represented himself as an officer of the local bank.

Typically, the victim was led to believe she was helping the bank lay a trap for a dishonest bank employee.

According to the National Better Business Bureau, with which the local Chamber is affiliated through membership, the swindle was widespread two years ago and may be on the rise again.

NBBB, which first exposed the racket in 1964, said the swindlers, generally two or three men working as a team and posing as bank examiners, security officers or FBI agents, choose their victims carefully.

They often spend time in lines in front of bank tellers’ windows in an attempt to observe account numbers, withdrawals or deposits of potential victims.

In the case of the Illinois woman, the swindler, posing as a bank officer, used a name that was familiar to the victim and cited the number on her passbook.

Convinced that she was being asked to help the bank in its efforts to check on the honesty of a teller, the woman, following instructions, withdrew $1,800 from her account, took the money home, and later turned it over to a man who flashed a gold badge. The woman was told the money would be redeposited in her account and a new passbook issued. When the victim finally began to worry and called the bank for reassurance, it was too late.

According to NBBB, the best advice is this: If you are contacted by a self-proclaimed bank examiner, FBI agent or bank security officer, advise him that you will call back. Disregard the number he provides and contact the local police or FBI office and explain why you are calling.

I also examined the 1954 blueprints (which are blue, I'll be darned!) for a Tourist Information Bureau on a well-traveled highway. The floor plan includes a spacious lobby with window seats and wide double entrances for visitors, a service counter, workspace behind the counter, office space, and a private restroom for the employees. There is no restroom for the public. Apparently that sort of thing wasn't necessary in the 1950's.

You gave travelers a free state highway map. They wrote you a four-page thank-you letter. Even their complaints were polite and constructive, like the one guy who gently suggested striping the center of the highway in some bright, highly visible color in order to avoid head-on collisions at night. He concluded his letter with the hope he had not made himself tiresome. I could kiss him.

Of course, he was probably a traveling con artist.

Random Flashback

While we’re on the subject of the Detroit area, I was messing around in Google Maps today, and found my old house in Ypsilanti, I think.

The house is the building towards the middle of the lot, away from the driveway. It was an A-frame with a large wing off to the side. I don’t think the outbuildings were there then. But I remember the creek, and the huge yard that Mom hated mowing so she just cut a few walkways in it, and the Lutzes, whose dogs did not care for my singing, whose fields those are off to the right. On the other side of those fields is the school where I went to third grade.

Funny that I could find it so easily, with nothing but a street name and town name, and thirty-one-year-old memories.

The house had been built by the couple my family bought it from, and had two secret rooms in the finished basement. On the wall of the laundry room was a gun rack which was a door to a secret sauna. Then, the far wall of the sauna slid back to reveal a small unfinished basement room.

There was an open stairwell from the living room down into the basement, and directly over that was a spiral staircase to a loft in the A-frame. The spiral staircase didn’t have any railing. I don’t think the previous owners had kids. They also didn’t know much about installing sliding glass doors, and Mom said she used to have nightmares that someone was trying to break into the house, and when she tried to close and lock the doors they just came out of their tracks.

I remember a big yellow flowering forsythia bush outside the sliding glass door of my bedroom, which had red carpet. And I remember a whole jumble of other things: gerbils, Brownie troop meetings, getting my cat Buffy so angry that he’d actually chase me into the bathroom, where I had to stay hidden until he'd forget and wander off, poor baby. I remember watching the Ernie Kovacs show with my parents – remember the monkeys, playing that song? I remember we used to get field mice in the kitchen. They'd flee my mom, and Buffy, and take refuge under the avocado-green refrigerator.

We were living there that winter day I dawdled and missed the bus, and Mom got mad and made me walk to school across the fields, not realizing how bitterly cold it was till the neighbors brought me home, and how terrible she felt. And we were there that time she had a panic attack in the middle of the night and we had to go to the emergency room.

There was the store we used to go to, Saturday mornings – the Big Ten? where my parents would buy a box of Turtles and get me a Baby Ruth. There were freezing cold days, and the creek iced over in winter, and piled so high with snow you could hardly see where it was. And in summer there was playing among the pine trees, and running around the crazy walkways in the tall grass that Mom had cut before giving up in disgust. (It was a two-acre lot. A rotary push mower? What was she thinking??)

And there was the occasional trip into Detroit. How many elementary school kids’ parents take them to see Wagner? I remember Lohengrin, and also concerts: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and a pretty soprano in the front row of the chorus with blond braids looped across the top of her head, smiling at me; Pavarotti, back before he lost all that weight, when he was really big.

It’s funny how, just looking at that aerial, the memories are so vivid I can feel them.

Especially if it turns out that isn't actually my house.

Small Austin!

Last night, on my way to the wastelands of the north to check in on Robbie's kitten, I got a call from my sister Margie, who had locked herself out of the house where she's temporarily staying. "It's off North Loop, near Guadalupe," she told me.

I know the area well. I lived in a little house right off North Loop many years ago, and then my then-future-now-ex-husband and I moved to the house on North Loop where our son was born in 1990. We drove past it on the way to pick up Margie. "Look!" I said to Eric. "That's it, right there. You were born in that house."

"That one?" he said. "Eeugggh."

Kids.

It was a really cute little house: two bedrooms, one bath, a nice-enough-sized living room and a big open kitchen. It didn't have central air, just one large window unit in the living room, which we ran as little as possible because of the expense. The only phone jack was at the end of the short hallway, which had a little alcove with a shelf for the phone. Below the phone shelf was another one for the phone book, which wouldn't fit because it was too thick.

The yard was huge and really nice, except that every ten minutes or so, an airplane would scream thundering overhead, momentarily blacking out the whole sky, so close you felt like you could reach up and touch its belly. The noise was absolutely deafening. You got used to it. The rent was $350 a month.

After picking up Margie we passed the other house where I had lived, before, a three-bedroom I had shared with two roommates. "I lived there when I met my ex-husband," I remarked.

"Oh, wow, I'm friends with the girl who lives there now!" said Margie. "One of her roommates is moving out. I've been thinking about moving in there."

Funny, isn't it, what a small town Austin can be sometimes? The airport's gone, the area is now considered to be central, and I expect rents have gone up a smidge. But the neighborhood still looks pretty much the same as I remember. Many of the houses still sport window units. And it's still cute.

Eric piped up from the backseat. "Just try not to marry my dad," he told Margie.

Kids!