It was a sad and nostalgic day when, just before Thanksgiving, the Bank of Baltimore voted itself out of business. It was Baltimore's oldest bank. and one of its oldest institutions.
Long-time customers wanted to know what was going to happen now. So did I, for I opened my account 47 years ago, and it has served me well through thick and thin.
On a hot summer day in 1947 I crossed Sun Square from the newspaper office to open an account at what was then the Savings Bank of Baltimore. Less than two months before I had been sailing the Atlantic as a merchant seaman for $300 a month, including overtime. Now I was a feature writer on the Sunday Sun at $25 a week and no overtime. This was my first payday and I had enough to salt some away.
In a strange country and with a strange bank, one doesn't approach this sort of thing rashly. Before signing my name to an account, with all its obligations and so on, I inquired of the bank's financial standing. I was assured that it had been founded well over 100 years before, and that even during the Great Depression -- still of recent and distinct memory -- the Bank of Baltimore had not failed, as had so many others.
This was a good sign and so I made a commitment. I signed the papers, handed over my money and a few minutes later got my account book, with the first entry, $5.
Over the years the account grew and the account shrank. I was no longer working on the west side of Sun Square 10 years later when I went back to the bank for a mortgage. In fact The Sun was no longer there, having flitted to finer quarters on Calvert Street.
Other banks and savings associations had turned down my application, but Page Nelson, the president, must have passed the word along. I got a conventional mortgage, which meant they would lend me two thirds, some $14,000, at 5 percent, if I could come up with the other third for a house in Roland Park.
Closing day was another hot Friday in August and at the appointed time, two o'clock, I was at the bank for settlement. I was a little nervous, for my wife was large with child -- born three days later -- but I had the money in the bank down the street and I was ready to sign the papers. This I did.
"And now Mr. Fielding, do you have a check?"
I had, and I took it out of my wallet and started to fill in the blank spaces.
"Oh, no, Mr. Fielding, you have to have a certified check. Didn't we tell you?"
Well, no, nobody had told me. They have dozens of settlements every week, I have one, or possibly two, in a lifetime. I'm supposed to know?
No problem. Though it was Friday afternoon and the banks were closed, a quick call to Mercantile sent me racing down the street to get my check certified.
It was some week-end: Friday settlement, Saturday moved in, Sunday a by-line in the old "Brown" section of the Sunday Sun, and on Monday a brand-new baby, another first.
So it went. Every month we paid the mortgage, though some months it was tight. Eventually, with a bigger family the house seemed to grow smaller. It was time to move. But that didn't end our association. The account number was still the same, and the amount fluctuated, much as it had in the past. I no longer used the Baltimore and Charles office; the Towson office was close by.
And then the bank went public, changed its name and took on shareholders. The Fieldings bit and bought and nibbled our nails as the price went down with the bank's fortunes. We witnessed the drop and eventual elimination of dividends, we saw the stock price fall to almost zero on the stock exchange, and then came Ed Hale's stockholder revolution.
We hung in, what else can you do? and gradually the sky got brighter and, like the sunshine, the dividends came back. And with them a buyer for the bank.
So now the last act is about to be played out. I suppose I'll get a new account number, no longer the old one engraved on my mind, and a new book, no longer the dark green job, and in it will go a new deposit -- the proceeds from the sale of the stock, about five times what it originally cost.
But I will still be sorry to see the bank go. For almost 176 years it has been a part of life of Baltimore. For almost 50 years of those it has been part of mine, too.
Geoffrey W. Fielding is a free-lance writer.