Men were losing everything. Some of them couldn’t take it. That winter, three farmers in our county took their own lives. I went to all three funerals.
The big banks were foreclosing as fast as they could.
George refused.
He sat in the back room of Farmers & Merchants with the board of directors, night after night, fighting. The other directors wanted to call in the loans. The bank examiners from Des Moines wanted him to call in the loans. Everybody said if he didn’t call in the loans, the bank would go under.
“If I call in those loans,” George said, “half this county loses its farms. And then who are we a bank for?”
They fought for weeks. I heard them through the wall sometimes, when I brought coffee. Shouting. Pounding on the table.
In the end, George did something I’ll never forget.
He mortgaged our house.
Our little yellow house on Elm Street. The one with the roses. He took out a mortgage on it and put the money into the bank’s reserves. Then he mortgaged his father’s farm. Two hundred acres. He put that money in too.
He told the board that if the bank went under, he’d go under with it.
“I’m not asking any farmer to risk more than I’m risking,” he said.
That night, he came home and sat on the edge of our bed in the dark.
“Dot,” he said. “I think we’re going to lose it.”
I held his hand.
“Then we’ll lose it together,” I said.
We didn’t lose it.
The next spring, the rains came. The crops were good. The farmers paid what they could. Some of them paid late. Some of them paid in installments for ten years. A few never paid at all.
