#24: Kenny & Dave's Excellent Bank Job #1.

I'm a little worried about Kenny. Not really. But I haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks. Well, he'll undoubtedly show up like the proverbial bad penny.¹

I know he's not sleeping in the gazebo, the way he did last winter—until the police came and “forced” him to stay in a (free) motel room. This year, Bruce is staying there, and he keeps it a whole lot neater than Kenny ever did—when it looked pretty much like a college freshman’s dorm room. Bruce gets up every morning, collects all his stuff in a variety of knapsacks and laundry bags, and comes downtown. I asked him why he didn’t get a room voucher—which became available for most folks in mid-December—and he said ‘cause he’d have to stay at a place 40 miles away and then how would he get his methadone every morning? A good question. But I had several equally good questions which made it clear that he hadn’t really explored other options. Maybe, like Kenny, he prefers the great outdoors. 

But I digress. 

A few months ago, Kenny told me he needed a ride to a town 70 miles away because he had a bunch of money in a bank there. When I suggested he could simply have the money wired to a bank here, he explained he didn’t have an ID—because, like so many of my other friends, he’d lost it somewhere, or it had been stolen, or he’d thrown it away in some fit of pique about the craziness of the government (similar to how my contemporaries burned their draft cards.)

When I pointed out that he’d need an ID at any bank he wanted to get the money from, he said not to worry because “they know me.” The idea that Kenny could have money in a bank somewhere didn’t surprise me. Fifty years ago, he went to an expensive prep school and expensive college and, presumably, his family had some money left over which they were using to support their ne’er-do-well son (unless they’d cut him off). But I doubted they’d deposit it in a bank in a state neither he nor his family lived in. 

I was reluctant to spend a good part of a day riding around with a conversational narcissist, but one afternoon, knowing I had the next day free, I told him to meet me at 9:00 am on the stoop. Sure enough, when I went down at 9:03 am, he was sitting there expectantly, looking disapprovingly at his watch, ready to go, like a kid about to get on a bus for a field trip to the zoo. 

A conversation with Kenny has little resemblance to a Socratic dialog or, actually, any dialog. As soon as I started the engine he started talking and continued talking for the entire hour-plus ride. While I occasionally insisted he let me get a word in edgewise, I finally decided that listening to him was as good as listening to NPR since he knows a lot about everything—from Tibetan Buddhism to Japanese cult films to human psychology—except, as he hastens to point out, his own. 

When we got closer to the town where he claimed this bank was located, he started showing a disconcerting familiarity with places we passed—where he said he used to hang out, where he’d buy his pot, and where he lived with his old girlfriend, about whom he had nothing good to say. (I imagine the feeling was mutual.), Then he started giving me increasingly roundabout directions on increasingly sketchy backstreets in increasingly sketchy neighborhoods until suddenly he directed me into a small shopping plaza with a small branch of a small Credit Union. 

By then I’d decided the whole thing was a twisted version of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure until we walked in the door and the first teller we saw said, “Hi Kenny.” Kenny greeted him enthusiastically and began walking toward the officers’ offices, but a woman, who appeared to be the head teller, said he had to wait because Mr. Bank Officer was with someone else. After cooling our heels in the lounge area for a while, the aforementioned Mr. Bank Officer appeared. He was immaculately dressed and way more clean-shaven than Kenny and I have ever been or ever wanted to be. He shook my friend’s hand with a smile and mine with what appeared to be a wink. 

Soon, he and Kenny were talking about how much money he had in the bank, which Kenny later told me he’d accumulated in Social Security payments by living in the woods on virtually nothing. Still, it didn’t seem to be enough money to be receiving the royal treatment at some out-of-the-way bank. 

Anyway, it turned out that Kenny still had a little money due on a loan with the bank, so he wanted to pay that off and take most of the rest.  

Just to amuse myself, I started asking questions about interest rates and early payment fees which the bank officer answered looking somewhat relieved, as if I were offering him a lifeline to the rational world, even though he knew that it would inevitably fray, plunging us back into Kenny’s more Keysian financial reality. (That would be Ken Kesey, not John Maynard Keynes). 

When he asked Kenny how much of the balance he wanted, my friend named a number that left barely enough for a rainy day—even if it were only a drizzle. Kenny’s friend the banker then asked him casually, but with a glint in his eye, what he was going to do with the money. Kenny smiled back with a similar glint, at which point they both turned to me, and I stated the obvious: “He’s going to give it away.”

We eventually decided that Kenny only needed a few grand at the moment, whereupon Mr. Bank Officer left the room, came back several minutes later, and counted out the money. We all smiled and shook hands, and Kenny and I left, waving to all the tellers as we walked back out through the lobby.  

Kenny continued to talk all the way back, but he did buy me lunch.

Frankly. I think I got the better end of the deal.

Naturally, as soon as I finished the first draft of this piece at “my”
coffee shop and stood up to go, Kenny—whom I really
hadn’t seen in weeks—walked in.

For more on my friendship with Kenny see
The (Street) Gospel According to Kenny and Ain’t No Then No More.

1. The expression comes from a time when coins were worth the metal they were made from. I.e., the value of a copper coin was what the actual copper in it was worth. So, people would shave off little bits, melt them down, and make new coins. And those “bad” pennies etc. ended up in circulation. It’s kind of an unfortunate analogy since I wouldn’t want to suggest that Kenny has lost any of his mettle.