Kathy Brant

I do not remember exactly when I acquired this bank, however, the world map shows the countries of Siam, West French Africa, and Russia as a vast expanse yet to cough several countries from its borders.  The Hawaiian Islands are tiny dots on the map, but they are not yet a state.  I loved maps and imagining all the exotic places in the world I might one day visit.

I also loved saving money.  The base of the bank says, "as you save so you prosper", and I intended to.  Mostly I put pennies, nickels and dimes in it.  Periodically I spread the coins on my bed to count them, and I never spent money from the bank. 

One day I counted the money and came up short.  That happened several more times.  I had a reputation in my family of always having money on hand; I also had three younger siblings.  There was never very much missing, but I no longer trusted my bank as a place to prosper. 

I started putting my coins in an old cigar box hidden in a dresser drawer.  When my foreign coin bracelet broke, I detached the coins and put them in the bank along with a handful of American coins.  I stopped adding money to my globe bank, and eventually my coin total remained the same.  I kept the bank in my room until I married and moved away, leaving it at my parents' house.

One Christmas decades later I received the globe bank and a handful of coins from my loving sister with a note that said she had taken money from my bank long ago---the lure of the corner grocery with its huge display of penny candy: licorice wheels, Tootsie Rolls, wax lips, Lik-M-Aid ---and for 5 cents, a popsicle---was just too much.  Her conscience bothered her, and she wanted to make it right, including paying interest.  Now my bank contains foreign coins, a handful of American coins and warm sisterly memories.