I (this is Lloyd) went to high school at Saint Paul’s College High in Concordia Missouri. One oddity of a boarding high school was that the school had a “bank”. Parents would deposit money into an account and specify how much money you could withdraw each week.
It would be hard to describe how inordinately proud 14 year old me was when my parents thought about it and decided not to put any limit on what I could take out. I knew that there was enough in there for me to get $5.00 a week for a semester. I don’t remember if that was money from my own bank account at the Farmers Bank of Lohman* or if it was my parent’s money. Money in our family was pretty fungible.
$5.00 happens to be enough money to walk to Casey’s every evening after Study Hours and buy an orange popsicle and still have enough money left over to walk downtown and buy a paperback book on Saturday.
Living at Concordia put me approximately 5,000 times closer to a bookstore than I had been at Honey Creek. It didn’t really matter that they didn’t have a lot of books to choose from. We only ever looked at the science fiction / fantasy section. Really, section is probably too strong a word. It was maybe 4-5 shelves that were maybe 3 feet wide.
Looking back on it, I can’t imagine that we went there every Saturday, but it must have been close. Just looking at the number of books in my basement attests to that.
Since I found one, here’s what the inside of the Farmers Bank of Lohman looked like:
*I once kissed the daughter of the bank president.