On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 03:07:18 GMT, jwb@csse.monash.edu.au brought down
from the Mount tablets inscribed:

>Michael Cash <mikecash@buggerallspammers.com> dixit:
>
>>In about 1986, when I moved to Martin TN to start school, I had in my
>>hot little hand a check drawn on the United States Treasury for my
>>monthly Naval Reserve activities.
>
>>I went from bank to bank to bank trying to cash the damned thing. It
>>was always the old "Do you have an account with us?" routine. Having
>>just arrived in town, I didn't have an account with any local bank.
>>When I finally found a bank that greeted me pleasantly and cashed my
>>check with no questions asked and no service fee, I opened an account
>>there.
>
>A friend of mine (now retired and living in Niigata) tells the story
>of when he was working in the US 20+ years ago, driving a group
>of executives from a Japanese car manufacturer around to investigate
>possible sites for a new factory. A couple of them had to change
>traveller's cheques, so they stopped at the banks in various towns.
>They got the same runaround, but in their case had the bonus of
>xenophobic stage whispers from the bank staff. Finally they found a
>town with a bank that would change the cheques. Guess which town got
>the car plant?

And a damned fine way to choose the town it was too.

I am reminded of a shipmate who said that when he left the Navy he
planned to put on a life jacket, shoulder a pair of oars, and start
walking inland. He said that when he came to a place where someone
asked, "What the hell are those things?" he would burn them and build
a house.

I forgot to mention that one of the banks which refused to cash the
check did so because "we don't cash out of town checks". I know the
Sepponian government can be kind of dodgy sometimes, but I don't think
the Treasury Department is known for bouncing checks.




--

Michael Cash

"Clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right, Mr. Cash.
Clowns and jokers."

                                Prof. Ernest T. Bass
                                Mount Pilot College