Shredding – My Guilty Pleasure

It doesn’t take much to amuse me. I bought a shredder to take care of confidential financial documents plus the occasional credit card and even CD. 

I realized that it didn’t really get much use in the basement, so I moved it under the kitchen table where I take a guilty pleasure watching junk mail disappear into its maw, leaving nothing but tiny strips of paper.

Wife Lila the bank teller

Wife Lila took a job as teller at the Hocking Valley bank when we were living in Athens, Ohio. She turned out to be good at it and enjoyed helping her customers. 

Miss Miller was one of her favorites – a tiny little woman who would show up to withdraw a buck or two at a time. She came in all excited to say that she was getting married. Her tip turned into a nice picture package in The Athens Messenger. (Click on the image to make it larger.)

When I went out to visit the newlyweds, I paused on the porch of a battered two-story frame house that had clearly seen better days when I heard a loud THUMP, THUMP THUMP, BANG, and an old tire went rolling out the front door.

Miss Miller was cleaning house.

Getting back to shredders

One nice thing about being a bank teller is that it was never hard for her to find a new job. When we moved to Gastonia, N.C., she hired on at the Carolina State Bank just as it was moving into new facilities.

Spencer, one of her bosses, was a nice guy, but it was good that the bank was housed in a one-story building because I’m not sure his elevator would reach a higher floor.

Right after a huge shredder was uncrated, Spence said, “Let’s see if this thing works.” while plugging it into the wall outlet.

It worked. Unfortunately, the first thing it ate was the instruction manual that had been sitting in the tray.

Lila the Head Teller

Once it became clear that Lila was the one other tellers turned to when they were out of balance, she was promoted to head teller at the Flagship Bank next to the paper. (The bank has since changed its name six or eight times, and the building is buried under The Post’s four-story building.)

She particularly liked working in the drive-in windows. She was probably holding the drawer open for me to insert two forms of ID before cashing my check.

She didn’t play favorites, although she said there was a particular bald-headed fireman who would get her weak in the knees.

That might have been about the time I ditched the combover and went fully chrome on top.