Pictures of customers. In their work clothes. With dirt on their knees and grease on their hands and flour on their aprons.
He asked everybody to bring in a picture. Most of them did.
There are sixty-three pictures on that wall now.
And at the top, above all of them, he hung a little brass plaque. He had it engraved at the trophy shop on Route 9.
It says:
PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
Farmers & Merchants Bank. Since 1968.
I’m eighty now.
I still go to the bank every Tuesday. I still wear my gardening clothes. George’s old hat. My green rubber boots.
Shelly still works the window. She asks about my roses.
The peppermint bowl is on the counter. Full.
And every Thursday, there’s a young man in jeans and a T-shirt and brown sneakers at the second window. People who don’t know him sometimes ask if the manager is in.
