Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [77]
I suppose both gas stations and banks would object to being linked together, but they serve the same purpose in my life. When I run out of gas or money, I have to go to a place where I can get more. Gas stations used to compete for my business by offering free air, free water and a battery and oil check. Now you’re lucky if the attendant bothers to put the gas cap back on.
Banks used to care about my business. They knew me. I didn’t have to bring my birth certificate, a copy of my listing in Who’s Who, and four other pieces of positive identification to cash a check for twenty-five dollars. If I wrote a check for more money than I had, Mr. Gaffney used to call and sound real angry. But he did call. He knew where to find me. No one at the bank knows me anymore. I went in yesterday to pick up a new Master Charge card that was supposed to be there, but they wouldn’t give it to me because I hadn’t brought the letter with me that they sent saying the card was ready.
If the bank doesn’t know me by name, the feeling’s mutual, because I don’t know my bank’s name anymore, either. It usually changes before I’ve used up all the checks they’ve sent me with the old name on it. My bank seems to keep acquiring other banks—with my money, I suppose—and they throw the other bank a bone by putting some little part of its name in with their primary name.
My bank’s name was originally the Chemical Bank, plain and simple. They changed it to Chemical National Bank, then Chemical Bank and Trust Co., then they acquired the Corn Exchange Bank and my checks said the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank. I always liked that best, but it didn’t last. They bought another bank, dropped the “Corn” and called themselves Chemical Bank New York Trust Co. This was unwieldy, and I was pleased several years ago when they renamed the bank once again. The new name? The Chemical Bank.
There is a bank in New York called the Irving Trust Company, and I’ve always sort of hoped they’d buy my bank and call it Irving’s Chemical Bank.
It’s too bad everything is as big and impersonal as it is now. I’m sorry to have lost personal touch with the people running the establishments where I do business, but if they don’t care, I can’t afford to be sentimental. When I was a little boy, we patronized Evans Grocery Store. It had oiled wood floors, and Mr. Evans always gave me a free candy bar when I brought him the check for the month’s groceries. The supermarkets were just getting started, and eventually, of course, they ran almost all the little neighborhood grocery stores out of business. My mother kept buying things from Mr. Evans, even though the same loaf of bread was two cents cheaper at the new supermarket. She wanted to help him survive, but apparently the two cents wasn’t enough, because he didn’t make it for long. He never got to be Evans New York Chemical Corn Grocery Store.
On Home and Family
A Nest to Come Home to
E veryone should have a nest to come home to when the public part of the day is over. Having a little room with a comfortable chair to settle into is important. You should be surrounded by familiar things. You can talk or read or watch television or doze off but you’re in your basic place. You’re home and you don’t have to watch yourself.
I’m not sure the furniture stores and the room designers are in tune with what most Americans want. We’ve never had a designer design anything in our house. It’s all happened by accident. I like our house a lot better than I like those rooms I see in magazines that have been put together by designers. They look more like the rooms they have just outside the men’s room or the ladies’ room on the ballroom floor of an expensive hotel. There isn’t a decorator who ever lived who could surround me with the things I like to have around me in my living room.
Decorators go for fuzzy white rugs that show the dirt, glass-topped tables you