The bonds between a mother and son endure
Iwaited 30 years to cash the bonds my mamma gave me, but then the pandemic put them in a hostage situation. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But I put these U.S. Treasury bonds in a safe deposit box at the PNC Bank branch attached to the ballpark of the same name many years ago. I waited patiently for the maturity date of June 1, 2020, to cash them.
But that branch closed in March and hasn’t reopened for regular business since. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that I finally retrieved and cashed the bonds Friday morning, 11 days later than I’d have liked. But to understand the level of satisfaction I felt when I held and then released the portraits of Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, you have to know something about my late mother.
Joan Curran, the eldest of five children, had just turned 8 when the stock market crashed in October 1929 and the Great Depression began. Her father, a dentist, had plenty of the striving Catholics of Jenkintown as his patients, but a lot of them stopped showing up when their money got tight.
The Currans had to cut back. Mom never stopped. We used to joke that she probably still had her First Communion money. That she squeezed dimes so tightly that FDR screamed. But the O’Neills had to pay a mortgage on my father the postal worker’s salary, and had four children who were going to college. So my mother, who looked nothing like Barbara Stanwyck but cracked wise the same way, told us to shut our traps and be thankful.
And we were. But after my father died and all her children were adults, a funny thing happened. Mom became extraordinarily generous with her offspring.
Mom bought these U.S. Treasury bonds during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, aka Bush the Elder. She mailed them to me, who’d just bought a house in the city named for William Pitt the Elder. She held out the reasonable hope that her son, the elder, would mature before the bonds did.
I’m in my third and final house within a quarter-mile radius on the North Side, and I’ve kept a list of the bonds’ maturity dates in a bedroom drawer. I was ready when June 1 came. PNC Bank was not.
I called the number on the sign on the bank door, which purported to help those seeking “access to your safe deposit box or express storage box.” But nobody answered that phone despite repeated attempts during business hours. So I called PNC’s main number, explained the situation and got a reply that came down to that old playground expression, tough noogies. The bond would be held safely until the bank reopened,
Neither Mom nor Ms. Stanwyck would approve. I waited a week before emailing the bank Tuesday in my capacity as a columnist, explaining that I thought this was a story because I can’t be the only PNC customer in this position.
I had reminded the PNC rep in my original phone call that her company was sitting on billions after selling its stake in Blackrock, and ought to be able to spare someone to go across the Allegheny River to open a door. I was more professional in my email, explaining, “Thankfully, I don’t need the money. But what if I did? It’s mine, I tell you, all mine. Bwah-haw-haw-haw-hah!”
I soon got a call from a PNC rep, Bonnie. (No last name “for security purposes,” she said.) The first rep had been misinformed, she said, and soon arranged for a branch rep to call me and set up an appointment at the bank, as should have happened the first time.
I achieved my teenage dream, or at least someone’s teenage dream, Friday morning: I wore a mask and got two men behind a locked bank door to open up. Jesse, also masked, let me unlock my safe deposit box, where I discovered I didn’t have one bond maturing. I had three.
Mom had spent $250, $250 and $500 for these bonds in 1990, and they’d all quadrupled in value, with another $147.20 as icing. (Do your own math, kids.) This gift outlived Mom by more than 10 years. I signed for the bonds and deposited the unseen money in my checking account. I’ll move it to savings forthwith, as she would want.
There is no drive-through at my branch, so appointment banking is the new normal. Mom, who lived through the era of runs on banks, would tell me not to sweat it, just to get it. As for what I should do with the money, I expect she’d remind me she has grandchildren.