X. Bev from the co\ufb00ee shop tells me that in the morning, the Wells Fargo employees have to stand across the street from the bank and cross and enter one at a time. This is the first I\u2019ve noticed it. The two of us watch it play out. We presume this is for some kind of security purpose, but we aren\u2019t really sure. The employees are wearing matching red-and-black backpacks, carrying co\ufb00ees. One by one, they\u2019re waved over by a petite woman in a pale-blue blouse and dark ponytail. A strange little morning dance.<\/p>\n
X. Before the farmers market was on Main Street, it was in the parking lot behind the shops, and before my father had other children, he used to bring me there. Every Saturday, he got cash from the ATM behind the Wells Fargo. Even then, the road was torn up. Cars would wait behind my father and I, a little belligerently, as we walked through the drive-thru. When it had rained, the pitted asphalt would collect water, and we would have to step carefully around the puddles. My father would get twenty dollars, which was the smallest amount the ATM could dispense, and we would go to the market together.<\/p>\n
X. My father has had other children. Now he brings my little brother to the market every Saturday, and he no longer walks through the ATM, because the market is on Main Street and all the vendors take cards.<\/p>\n
X. I don\u2019t bank at the Wells Fargo. I don\u2019t because I once heard my father say it was evil. This was 2008, and so he was speaking in large, economic terms, on the scale of markets and bailouts and Wall Street, but all I knew about banking was the Wells Fargo, with its long teller counter and gray-beige carpeting, its slick black countertops and pens on silver chains. And I was a child, and did whatever my father told me to do.<\/p>\n
X. I don\u2019t have a reason to go to the Wells Fargo, since I don\u2019t bank there and don\u2019t feel like starting, but I want to, for the sake of this essay. So I decide to ask if they\u2019ll trade me quarters for dollars, which I presume I can do without having an account. Laundry in my building is two dollars for a wash and seventy-five cents for a dry. There are more modern dryers that cost a dollar fifty, but they don\u2019t dry your clothes very well, and anyway I like the rolling rumble and warm gray-brown color of the old machines. My building doesn\u2019t have a machine to split dollars into coins, and at this point I\u2019ve emptied all the coin jars I have and started to ask my job to pay out my tips in quarters only.<\/p>\n
X. Most of the businesses I\u2019ve worked at have gone to the Wells Fargo for change. At the Italian luncheonette, the owner would cross the street in the morning to get our coins for the day. I wrote the soup specials with chalk marker in my slanting teen handwriting. At the winery, the Wells Fargo let us park in their parking lot and broke our hundreds into small bills. I practiced taking a cork out of a bottle and putting it back in until it broke into small, shredded pieces.<\/p>\n
X. The sign for the Wells Fargo is a light-box sign, which is to say a hard plastic shell around a light source, so that the colors shine brightly to advertise to passing cars. The Wells Fargo sign faces Jackson Street, which is the southbound half of Highway 95. From my apartment windows, you can see the Wells Fargo sign all the time. At night I have to close my blinds to keep out its yellow-red glare and that of the streetlights, which, around here, blink after 10 p.m.<\/p>\n
X. The Wells Fargo is the primary object in view from my living-room window. I live alone, and my dining table has only one chair. I eat my meals with only the Wells Fargo for company.<\/p>\n
X. It must be the bank manager\u2019s birthday today, because he\u2019s wearing a black sash over his black dress shirt. The sash reads \u201cHappy 50th Kevin\u201d in shiny gold letters. The interior of the Wells Fargo is sparse and sprawling\u2014a lot of wide, open spaces for a bank. It\u2019s done up in cream and dark wood tones, with tasteful splashes of red. Above the teller windows, there\u2019s a large vinyl mural: a collage of Wells Fargo accoutrements and iconography of the American West. There are only two tellers when I arrive, and they\u2019re both busy. A man in a maroon shirt and green shorts is at the far end of the bank, talking at length with the young man behind the counter. I hover in the doorway, and the bank manager notices me. He takes an old-school Bluetooth headset\u2014the kind with a little wing for the microphone so that it reaches toward the mouth\u2014off of his ear and comes over to where I\u2019m dithering. My mental note-taking must look like confusion. This is when I notice the \u201cHappy 50th Kevin\u201d sash. Kevin, one presumes, asks how he can help me.<\/p>\n
X. Both the Italian luncheonette and the winery are out of business now. After the vineyard burned, the winery sold every bottle it had left and closed the shop. They split the proceeds among the employees and mailed us greeting cards with cash inside. I\u2019m using one of the twenties to buy quarters at the Wells Fargo.<\/p>\n
X. \u201cI\u2019m just here to buy quarters,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
The birthday boy directs me to stand in the tangle of stanchions instead of the atrium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen too many people get passed up in line because they were standing over there,\u201d he says, and it\u2019s a kind thought, even though there\u2019s hardly anyone in the bank. It\u2019s his birthday, so I humor him.<\/p>\n
I get to the window and explain myself. The teller is a middle-aged woman with a gray ponytail slipping down into the collar of her standard black polo shirt. Behind her, and really all throughout the bank, there are gold balloons with \u201c50!\u201d printed on them and decorative red-and-black warning signs that say things like \u201c40s End Here!\u201d and \u201cOver the Hill!\u201d<\/p>\n
I trade my twenty for two rolls of quarters in orange-and-white paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cMission accomplished,\u201d says the woman at the window as she hands me the coins. She said this to the woman before me, too, so I suspect this is her way of saying, \u201cYou can go now.\u201d<\/p>\n
X. Back at my apartment, I watch the guy in the maroon shirt exit from the bank\u2019s back door and head towards the parking lot and the ATM. He\u2019s wearing white socks, which shine brightly in the sun. He walks slowly, shifting all his weight from one foot to the other. I watch him until he disappears into the tangle of cars.<\/p>\n
X. One of the Wells Fargo website\u2019s corporate history pages discusses the bank\u2019s founding in 1852, referring to it as \u201can innovative start-up,\u201d and makes reference to Wells and Fargo\u2019s \u201c[advocacy] for inclusive communities.\u201d Since the 1970s, Wells Fargo has employed dedicated corporate historians who gather historical documents, artifacts, and accounts about the history of the bank. Unsurprisingly, the corporate history webpage makes no mention of the subprime mortgage crisis, redlining, or any of the embezzlement scandals.<\/p>\n
X. In the front wall of the Wells Fargo, right next to the adjacent storefront, there\u2019s an ancient after-hours deposit slot. The retro text on it calls it an \u201cafter hours depository,\u201d and the more modern sticker above informs visitors in no uncertain terms that it is for BUSINESS USE ONLY. They use capital letters to make this very clear.<\/p>\n
X. Banks are an interesting place to be, a bit like a fortress: innately concerned with violation and robbery. Anything that protects from something imagines it. At the front of the Wells Fargo, there\u2019s the plastic strip that provides height measurements for the security camera. At the back, the vault. The vault is visible, or at least the door to it is\u2014a grid of iron bars like an Old West jail. A bank is always permeated with anxiety. Fear of a robbery, sure, but also the everyday anxiety of simply not having enough money. This is the reason I have to need quarters to go inside\u2014I can\u2019t justify my presence without it.<\/p>\n
X. Beneath the yellow text on the light-box sign, there\u2019s the dark-red silhouette of a stagecoach with two drivers. Wells Fargo\u2019s corporate historians have published many articles on the association between the bank and the California Gold Rush and the Pony Express, hence the shape on the sign.<\/p>\n
X. As I sit on the bench in front of the Wells Fargo, considering the after-hours depository, a young man rushes past me, bent over to steady a large white filing cabinet on a red hand truck. The whole operation, man included, rattles and groans.<\/p>\n
X. The Wells Fargo sits at the southernmost edge of the block across from my apartment, and unlike most buildings in the downtown area, it has three visible sides. It\u2019s a rectangular building with a flat roof, beige stucco bricks in straight lines\u2014I can\u2019t tell if they\u2019re real bricks or a pattern in the stucco\u2014capped with dusty dark-brown metal sheets and supported by a gray stone foundation. At the back and the front, the gray stone becomes black marble, usually dusty, but with small silver specks in it. The bank has thin, dark windows that span the whole space from the floor to the ceiling, covered entirely by thin metal blinds.<\/p>\n
X. The Wells Fargo maintains several long, thin strips of plant life and mulch all around the building, on either side of the ATM driveway, and in front of the entrance. I mention the mulch because the mulch takes up most of the space, and is only occasionally interrupted by a small shrub or a shock of tall grass. The grass grows in small areas because it\u2019s limited to a tiny gap in the black plastic sheeting that lies below the mulch. Much of the grass is dried out.<\/p>\n
X. The ATM is twenty-four hours and brightly lit. The whole building, in fact, is covered in downward-tilted lights that look like half-closed eyes. The light they produce is white but not harsh, and they cover the three exposed sides of the bank to provide a sense of security.<\/p>\n
X. I have to go outside to check that the silhouette of the stagecoach is really there. A tree blocks the view of it from my windows. It is dark outside, and I lock my door before leaving.<\/p>\n
X. In front of the ATM, there are bright-yellow guardrails to keep drivers from hitting the machines. The guardrails have been there forever, sentries around the ATM. They\u2019re oddly constructed, a vertical line with a rectangle intersecting the top of it, so that the overall e\ufb00ect is that of a stick-figure man making an exaggerated shrug. I used to climb on them as a child.<\/p>\n
X. In 2015, robbers crashed an SUV into the exterior window of the Wells Fargo History Museum in San Francisco, California. Not the bank\u2014the museum. They made o\ufb00 with several gold nuggets that had been on display. The museum opened again three weeks later, once the glass had been replaced. It hosted tour groups and had a gift shop.<\/p>\n
X. At night, the metal blinds don\u2019t block the view into the Wells Fargo, and the whole place becomes completely permeable. I can see the rolling chairs behind the counter, the large, bowl-shaped lights that swing from the ceiling. I can see the balloons and the decorations, the locked vault. I can see Kevin\u2019s o\ufb03ce. Behind his chair is a large photograph, printed on canvas, of a stagecoach against a sunset. The shelf behind his desk is littered with small ceramic, plastic, and glass stagecoaches, a collection that I imagine took years.<\/p>\n
X. The mythology of the American stagecoach is deeply intertwined with attack and robbery\u2014Wells, Fargo, & Co. stagecoaches carrying gold and other valuables across the American West were often robbed and looted. Most available accounts of the history of the American stagecoach are the product of Wells Fargo\u2019s history department, which regularly provides fodder for marketing and evidence in trademark disputes. \u201cFew other corporations in this country are as historically conscious\u2014or as dependent on history for its public image\u2014as Wells Fargo,\u201d writes Philip L. Fradkin in Stagecoach:<\/em> Wells Fargo and the American West<\/em>. I suppose this is because keeping the image of the threat at hand makes the safety more impressive.<\/p>\n X. Once, in our dusty backyard, my father caused an ember to burn my young skin and said nothing about it, which is how I realized there was no guarantee that he could protect me from anything.<\/p>\n X. A car comes out of the ATM driveway, a small gold sedan. Its rear tire gets caught on the curb, and the vehicle pauses for a moment at the top of the arc before it bounces back down to the pavement.<\/p>\n X. Waiting for the arrival dance at the co\ufb00ee shop across the street, I see my father\u2019s car pull up to the stoplight. He drives a Jeep, because he\u2019s enchanted by the idea of riding high above the rugged landscape.<\/p>\n X. The woman who goes into the bank, the woman with dark hair, is wearing a purple sweater today. She arrives along with Kevin, who is wearing a blue suit. It is no longer his birthday. He has to wait on the corner until the woman in the purple sweater gives him the all-clear. She disappears for a long moment; puts a university-football-game foam finger in the front window; exits and walks a short distance away from the bank, checking for threats, and then waves Kevin over. This is the dance.<\/p>\n X. At nine o\u2019clock, the woman in the purple sweater takes down the foam finger and unlocks the door to the bank. I can\u2019t begin to decipher the connection between these two tasks.<\/p>\n X. At night, when all the windows of the bank become permeable, I watch a janitor clean the floors. The windows reach all the way down to the gray stone foundation, but the foundation ends a little below eye level from the street. So as this woman mops the pale-brown tiles, I watch her feet move across the floor\u2014just glimpses between the legs of chairs and the tellers\u2019 counter. It is so strange, the contrast between the elaborate theater of the morning, the slow grand entrance of the company, and the ending, a solo, this quiet cleaning up, the woman all by herself in the still-lit bank. At this moment, by a trick of the light, I can see straight through the entire thing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\n Annie Sheneman is a second-year MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of Idaho, where she serves as the Nonfiction Editor for Fugue<\/em>. She writes essays about banks, puppets, streets, agricultural equipment, or whatever else interests her at any given moment.<\/p>\n Her Instagram is @annie_sheneman.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t bank at the Wells Fargo. I don\u2019t because I once heard my father say it was evil …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2623,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[109],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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