I can section my childhood by the colors of my dad’s banks. His banks. Where he worked. Back when corporate ladders could be scaled from the very bottom all the way to the top, my dad – the least-favored, middle child of a reformed bootlegger – was a repo man, a loan officer, a vice president, a president and finally a CEO. All without a college education, without family connections or social polish.

My early childhood was a pine green bank with brown paneled walls. The lobby was two stories and the offices upstairs were accessed by a grand staircase embellished with elaborate Spanish-style ironwork.

My elementary school years. An orange and blue bank. A red, white and blue bank. Then, my favorite bank. Purple, orange and cherry red. At that time, a bank’s decor could be jubilant and carefree as long as their practices were not. It was in front of the mall, so after I’d blown my allowance on book from B. Dalton and an Orange Julius, I’d walk over and hang out in the employee break room, read, and listen to the tellers gossip.

His last bank, the bank that carried me from adolescence to marriage and motherhood, was tan and blue. Seascapes and grasscloth.

Over the years my dad worked at almost every bank in town. He couldn’t put on airs, or move beyond feeling set apart by childhood poverty and lack of education, so he never joined the genteel set in any of their clubs or their pricey sports. But they knew him. Everyone in town – it seemed -- knew him. Nightly, he brought home offerings. A big bundle of turnip greens, garden tomatoes, just-clipped camellias, a pound of shrimp, jars of jelly, and, once, a small carved elephant from someone’s trip to India.

In every bank, even in the last bank, where he served as president and CEO, he had glass-walled office directly in the lobby, with a door that I never saw closed. Blinds that were never drawn. People from all walks of life sprawled comfortably in the chairs across from his desk. He kept balloons and suckers in his top drawer in case someone dropped in with a child or grandchild.

Once, it was a banker’s job to know every property in the county, its history and its probable worth; to grasp the community’s need for products and services and determine which new business might fail or succeed; to know who was drowning in vice (despite appearances), and who was "good people" needing a leg up; to protect individuals from themselves, and his board and investors from undue risk. He knew the people he sometimes had to disappoint, and he knew the people he answered to. When my dad retired, the little independent, tan and blue bank was sold to a large financial corporation. It was the last independent bank in the county.

Oh, I am suspicious of unexamined nostalgia. Concentrated power depends upon the benevolence of the person or people in power. As troublesome as that idea is today, imagine it in action in an era of institutionalized racism and sexism. (I'm not sure that era is over. Despite recent spurious accusations, banks have never been socially progressive.) A few fond memories are not a call for a return to the "good ol’ boy" network way of doing business.

I wonder, however, if the ongoing banking crisis would have happened if a bank’s CEO still sat at a desk in the lobby. If every day he saw workers in their uniforms – fishermen in rubber boots, waitresses in their aprons and comfortable shoes, construction workers covered in cement dust – bringing in their paychecks. If he gave their children lollipops. If at night he cooked up a huge pot of greens from the family whose produce stand he helped to finance. If when he tucked his daughter into bed at night, in her pink and green bedroom, he pressed a small, wooden elephant into her hand and told her how it came all the way from India.