For three years of my undergrad Music Education study at the University of Kentucky, I rented one of five rooms the elderly landlady rented to college boys. Part of our rental agreement was that we would perform one task with her per month. That could be anything from driving her somewhere to assisting with her Christmas Cards.
Life at the Dagley house included an education UK could not match. She adjusted forever my dialect, diction, grammar and vocabulary. I uncomfortably experienced how the élite deal with the ordinary, picked up breadcrumbs of how the rich keep, manage and spend money and cringed at her political prejudice and unapologetic racism.
This story is about one of those errands when I took her to the bank.
She wanted to “cash” a check. She didn’t specify why….just handed me a money bag and an envelope for the teller. Imagine…. a college student approaching a bank teller with a nearly blind senior citizen woman, and handing the teller an envelope containing a check, a note to “cash it” with specific instructions of how many of each denomination – and a money bag. I was unaware of the amount of the check until the teller summoned security, which quickly, but politely, positioned around us. Can you say awkward moment? The exchange with the teller went something like this:
Teller: “Ma’am, are you sure you want to cash this….all of this?”
Dagley: “What does the note say?”
Teller: “Yes ma’am, but are you aware of the amount you are asking for?”
Dagley: “You mean the amount for which I am asking? (She was always correcting grammar and pronunciation). Is there confusion about the amount?”
I was not surprised that they were questioning her writing, especially if she wrote it out herself. More probable is that her attorney, a frequent visitor, wrote the check, and that her signature was all over it. When signing things, she would ask us to place the pen in the general area. Her signature was huge and never went in the intended direction.
Teller: Are you sure you have the right number of zeros?
Dagley: How many zeros do you see?
Teller: Ma’am that is ten thousand dollars.
Dagley: “Yes, it is. It is in my account and I want you to put it in this bag.”
Bank officer w/Security: “Miss Dagley, may we have a word with you?”
Dagley: “No. You may not. This is a simple transaction and I want you to complete it NOW.”
I never knew what she did with that $10,000 in cash.
This and more stories about My College Years with an Old Opera Singer HERE.