I remember going to the bank when I was a kid. It was one of the chores my mother would drag me along on, while doing laundry and having an ice cream soda at the pharmacy next door to the laundromat. Or having a grilled cheese sandwich and a coke at the Woolworth’s lunch counter downtown, next to the Midtown theater, barber shops, and newspaper stands that orbited the square. Or doing her banking which baffled me, of course. My mother would be at the teller window doing a transaction and I was distracted and looking around the place.
I saw the vault door, a two ton hunk of steel and intricate gearing on the inside that was laid back flat against the wall, I could see inside to the concrete and steel vault within. Secure? You bet! It was like Fort Knox to me. It held the hundreds of millions, back then it was millions, of dollars that constituted the depositor’s money, I assumed. What a burden. What a dragon’s hoard. It took me many years and a theater career to realize that that was all a show. Do you think that the bank’s money is in that vault? I did, once.
Outside, on the street. The street going from the marina to Franklin Square in Norwich, CT, where the bank I was standing in and gawking at was located. It looked like a Greek temple with Doric columns and stone steps ascending to the great glass doors. You had to climb up to the gods of finance within. That was banking. That was money. That was the only way you could live in this world. And from where I stood I could see into the Holy of Holies: The Vault. Is your money there? No. Of course not. Your money is in mining shares or invested in General Electric or AT&T. In government bonds and Ponzi schemes. The government controls our money, or so I thought. Those were the gods of commerce. Or the Titans, one might think. Money is our blood sacrifice and the blood that flows through our vanes. We give a little. We get a little. Every worshiper knows that.
Every school teacher. Every tinker.
Every scholar and every thinker.
Each bum on the street and every street sweeper.
The high. The low. Every newspaper inker.
All need money to live.
So I, as a little kid, standing in the lobby of a bank in Norwich, Connecticut marveling at the wonder and the security of it all was just an acolyte. Just a novice initiate into the world of ‘We own everything and we own you, too’ that I lived in.
And what did I know? Just that the mechanism of the vault door looked cool and secure and an object of worship to supplicants like my mother who worshiped at the altar of Mammon with a deposit slip passed under the glass confessional and a savings accounts, 3.5% interest, would you like a calendar, Ma’am?
Recently I bought a set of lock picking tools. I had watched some YouTube videos on lock picking and it looked like a clever puzzle to solve so I thought, Why not? Thirty dollars later and a neat little wallet of about 20 picks, rakes, and tensioning tools arrived at my door. I took the lock off of my driveway gate, I never lock it anyway, and had a whack at it. It was a Master lock I got at Home Depot last year to ‘secure’ my perimeter. It even had the word ‘Master’ emblazoned on the laminated steel casing as if that meant anything. How secure is that?
It was a little rusty and very much in need of oiling, as are all residential locks exposed to the weather, I suppose. So I wasn’t expecting much. I put the pick in just to feel around and get an understanding of the mechanism. Yup. There is some springy resistance against the pick. That must be a pin or something. And there is another. Cool.
Then I tried picking for real. I put the tensioner in and gave it a press, just to put pressure on the lock cylinder as if a real key was in it and legitimately wanted to open the lock. Then I felt around and pushed up on the pins, not expecting much. OK. There’s something. A pin fell into place. And another. A click! That’s supposed to be a good thing, or so said the Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube. He should know. He has a YouTube channel!
What? Am I at the end? I’d gone all the way down the inside of the lock cylinder, merrily picking as I went. Not really sure what I was doing. I’d say I was lost but since this was my first trip through the lock picking maze, how can I say I was ever found first to begin with? Oh, OK. Another. And another. Oh, another click! This if fun-wait. Huh?
The lock just snapped open in my palm. Under two minutes and it was compromised.
Really? I, a jackass with a thirty dollar lock picking set just opened a Master lock? No way. It must be beginner’s luck. Beginner’s, lock picking, criminal’s luck. Let me try that again.
The second time took more time because I really wanted to know what I had done right the first time. So I felt along the inside of the cylinder for the little spring loaded pin thingies. One, two, three… Where are they? How are they set in the cylinder? And how do they respond to the magic of the key that I was trying to counterfeit? Alright. There is a soft spot. A click! I remember that from the YouTube videos! OK. That one is ‘set.’ And another. Then back again. Pretty straight forward. And… Open! Under five minutes. Like, way under. Who’s the master now?
You’ve got to be kidding me. A dweeb in his home can pick a lock without knowing what the heck he is doing in under a few minutes? Why do we even have locks in the first place, anyway? I mean, they look so impressive what with their laminated bodies and two ton doors. Their glass windows and scary tellers and their calendars. What’s the use of them?
The use of them is use, of course. We use them because we use them. We believe in them because we believe in them. We trust them because enough of us trust them to make them trustworthy. Locks are there to keep honest people honest, they say. Who is this ‘They’ anyway? And why do ‘They’ have so much to say? And why should we believe ‘Them’ anyway? Have ‘They’ ever picked a lock? I doubt it.
That bank on the side street of the 1960’s city downtown with the Doric columns and the marble steps and glass doors admitting one to the sacred, sanctioned lobby with its holiest of hollies laid bare, tempting, licentious, at the back of the temple. That house to commerce and lifeblood of town and shop and home. It exists because we believe it exists. It has virtue because we think it does. It gives us life because we give it life.
Until someone comes along and picks its locks.
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