The Charity Bank

“I'm pretty sure you have no idea what you are doing and that this is not going to work.” Mark said this reflexively without actually knowing what Norman's plan was this time.

Norman ignored Mark's remark and kept typing on his computer. Mark was a little bored and feeling hurt that Norman was ignoring him. Norman kept typing away.

“Why did you want me to come over if you're just going to ignore me?” Mark asked.

Norman stopped typing and swiveled his chair around to face Mark, who was slouched on the armchair with one leg over an arm while he stared at the ceiling.

Norman began, “I am beginning a new project...” Mark's own thoughts interrupted. Norman was still speaking, but Mark's internal monologue drifted, “of course you are, Norman. That is what you do. You start projects. You never finish anything.” Mark thought, while feeling the presence of the various piles around the room, stacks of notebooks and storage boxes with more notebooks, and computer printouts. The clutter of Norman's many projects. “....it occurred to me that many people here in this area are unbanked. They don't have bank accounts. They rely on check cashing places and payday loans and pawnshops, and they are poor and broke, and sure, a lot of that is just being low income, but I think a lot of it is just bad money management skills. Paying the fees for cashing a check, and all that. I have been talking with neighbors and other people around here, and I did some research to confirm what I was learning.”

“Sure Norman. We live in a poor neighborhood.”

“Yes, I know, and I had an idea to help. I want to form a small local online bank app that people can use. A service that provides traditional banking services and convenience but without fees of any kind. Something which is basically like a charity and service combined and easy to use. The idea is that it's hyper local, so that someone like me, right here in the neighborhood who actually knowns the people could be the one who advocates for it. Someone people trust.”

“Oh geez, Norman. You want to start a bank? Are you crazy? You don't have the kind of money needed for that, or the knowledge, or the connections, and frankly, you don't have the follow-through.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence Mark. Nice to meet you too. Look, I have figured out what I need to do. That is why I called you. I can use AI to create a lot of the basic parts and build the app, but I think I need to get a whole team and some backers if I am going to make this work. I want you to introduce me to the priests at your church. I think this would be a good thing to fold into Catholic charities. If I can get them interested, they have the resources to fill in all the areas which I lack.”

Mark sat in silence processing everything Norman had said. He could feel the inertia in his body taking hold and resisting the request made of him. He was being asked to do something which felt awkward and foolish. Why would he bother his parish priest with such a chore as dealing with another one of Norman's schemes. But Mark also didn't like to say no to people, so knowing he would regret this latter he said, “Well, Norman. I don't know. I guess I could arrange for you to speak with Father Lou.”

“Great! Thank you.” Norman swiveled his chair back to the computer and started typing again.

Norman did have a knack for gaining the trust of the people around the neighborhood. Though he wasn't at all wealthy, he was always willing to give money and rides to people. It was one of the things Mark had grown to admire in Norman.

Mark was bored again right away, and tried to change the subject, “What were you telling me the other day about Donovan?”

Norman stopped typing and swung his chair around to face Mark again. He got up and walked over to the shelf where his vinyl collection sat and pulled out a record, A Gift From A Flower To A Garden. He carefully extracted a record and placed it on his turntable and closed the lid. Wear Your Love Like heaven began to fill the room with its plush and mellow sound. Norman lit a cigarette and sat down again, and silently let the music wash over them while he smoked.

Norman was 52 years old, though he looked even older. He was a weak and pudgy man with a slight bald spot. He was in every way the picture of the kind of sad and insignificant person who worked in a shabby little office as an insurance salesman, or whatever, with nothing about his body, dress, or manner, to make him at all interesting. Though, for those who took the time to speak with Norman they found an unusually imaginative and creative mind and an engaging speaker, when he turned it on. Norman was, in fact, a salesman for a company that sold industrial-grade ceramic tiles, refractory bricks, and heat-resistant adhesives. Mark could only remember this now because he had asked Norman several times about it, and Norman had a way of delivering the line like a commercial slogan with a news reader's voice which made it stick in Mark's mind like a jingle.

They had only become friends through a chance meeting at a bar a year and half earlier. Mark needed a ride home and Norman offered. During the car ride Norman popped in a mix tape. Mark was not so drunk that he didn't notice the odd retro quality of the setup. No one has cassette tapes anymore. Everything in Norman's life was like artifacts of the bygone. In his home he still had a landline phone. “My office still has an old rotary dial phone,” Norman had told him once, and Norman had to pull up pictures of one on the computer to show Mark what that was. Mark had enjoyed the music on the tape and this gave them a pretense for staying in touch. Mark felt at first like he was being charitable by being friends with Norman, but had come to discover that he really enjoyed spending time with him. Mark occasionally tried to convince Norman that he should become Catholic.

“So, as you may recall, Donovan was in his heyday in the late 60s. All his best-known hits came out between his start in 65 up till about 1970 at the latest. After that his work just isn't as good.” Norman had been giving Mark a primer in 1960s music since they met. “Many of his best songs were expressions of his unrequited love for Linda Lawrence. She was a model, and had been the girlfriend of Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. But Jones had dissed her. She was holding out hope for him, and so was resisting all of Donovan's courting attempts. Then Jones dies, found drowned in a swimming pool on the property where he was living which had been owned by A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh. The pool had Pooh character statues around it. Donovan marries Linda the next year, and after that his music loses its edge. I think that once he got what he wanted, he was happy and contented, and that is the most useless emotion for making art. Art is fueled by suffering, longing, and doubt.”

Mark let this bleak prognosis sit on the counter-top of his perception. He had no ready argument against it.

“Furthermore, I have this dark conspiracy theory, though no evidence whatever to back it, just a -it would make a good plot line – hunch, that Donovan, that minstrel of hippy-dippy flower power peace and love, is actually the one who caused Brian Jones's death. Though this is, admittedly, a very Matlock level plot theory.”

Mark had no idea what Norman meant by “Matlock,” but he let it pass. “You know Norman, without any evidence for such a claim, you are guilty of the sin of calumny to go spreading that thought around.”

“Yeah, I guess you are right. My only evidence is how trite and uninteresting Donovan's musical output became once the 70s started. My theory is that, in addition to losing the muse of his longing, he also had a guilty conscience.”

Norman got to meet with Father Lou, and Father Lou was interested enough in Norman's idea to put him in touch with others within the Catholic charities network and hierarchy. The idea actually began taking shape, and once this happened, it became publicly known. Once that happened there was a lot of push back from the owners of the check cashing and payday loan places. They sought to stop the project through legal means, and, though Norman could never prove it, possibly through unscrupulous means as well. Norman got jumped one night and beat up. Two months later someone set fire to his car. However, by then there were so many people actually working on the project that even if threats could dissuade Norman, he was no longer the only one with power to bring the cause forward.

Norman still had no idea what he was doing. He especially had no idea what it was like to actually carry one of his mad schemes all the way through to completion. His own tendency to lose steam would have taken over if there weren't other people keeping the momentum going. Mark was surprised and impressed.

“I'm really amazed at how much progress is being made on your banking charity idea, Norman.” Another one of their routine hang out sessions. Norman was pulling a record out of the sleeve. “Thanks Mark. I do owe a lot to you for introducing me to Father Lou. I would not have gotten anywhere without all the backing and help. Really, they are doing the heavy lifting. All I really did was sketch out the idea.”

“Still Norman, you are in uncharted waters for yourself, I would say. You have stated lots of things that have never made it this far.”

“I guess so.” Norman looked into the inner vistas of his own thoughts. “Though I don't know. Uncharted doesn't sound right. Lots of other people have embarked on things that were new or unfamiliar to them. I am not the first to do so. I am not the first to start a bank. I was able to find out what I needed to do by researching. It wasn't so much that I had no chart, what I had was no direct experience of going where the chart pointed. I guess I would say that charts exist.”

“Fair enough Norman, but you had no chart for your own inner capacity to handle the terrain.” Mark answered. Norman put the record on the turntable. “This is uncharted territory for you Mark. There are worlds of music out there you have never heard. I think you will like this one. This is Jimi Hendrix, live at the L.A. Forum. It opens with a monster of a tune. It's an instrumental track, a cover, called Tax Free. This song was originally written by 'two Swedish cats' named Hansson & Karlsson.” -he said echoing Hendrix's statement on the recording - “and those guys played some shows with Hendrix in Europe. They were an instrumental band with just drums and an organ. Check this out.” Norman lowered the needle and the song filled the room. A Rough distorted chord strummed in an almost caveman rhythm and then suddenly broke into a complex filigree of lacing and bending notes, interwoven with drums and bass. Norman relived his past experiences of hearing the song, while Mark soaked in the strange novelty of it all. Each of them facing the unknown future by creating meaning in the present, and holding fast to what was good as best as they could understand it. A path through water leaves no trail. But sometimes people leave notes behind which can help guide us.