1960 -1961 A GLIMPSE OF HISTORY

EVERY JOB HAS ITS PROBLEMS PRESIDENT KENNEDY PONDERS THE OPTIONS
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS OCTOBER, 1961 - OR SO IT SEEMED AT THE TIME< BUT SUBSEQUENT REPORTS SAID THE THE PHOTO WAS NOT TAKEN AT THE TIME OF THE CRISIS BUT USED BY THE MEDIA AT THE TIME FOR ITS SYMBOLIC VALUE

After about two years in the Stock and Share Department of the Commonwealth Bank, I became the subject of one of those Staff Department letters which began "It has been decided to move Mr Anthony Dixon to ( in this case) Summer Hill Branch". And that was that!

My familiarity with Summer Hill was limited to flying past it on non-stop electric trains rushing into the City or from the City to their first stop at Strathfield before heading on to Lidcombe. A few times I had driven alongside the railway past Summer Hill, but it was not a place to stop - for me, anyway. Until now.

So I started working in this quiet little backwater of a branch. As I said of Stock and Share Department, computerisation lay well in the future. At Summer Hill we had hand posted Savings Bank ledgers and simple Machine posted Trading Bank ledgers.Almost everything about the Branch would within ten years be regarded as archaic. But, for now things went on as they had always done - in the case of the hand posted Savings Bank ledgers - since about 1901 when the Bank was founded.

 The essential elements were a set of about twenty square pidgeon hole files., an appropriate number of small rectangular two post binders for the ledger sheets, a stand-up desk and there you were - in business. The virtuoso of the hand -posting was the Branch Accountant a very short man named Mr Wilson. The poor fellow had had a nervous breakdown at some stage and it had heavily marked his personality. Every day with rigid regularity he went home to have lunch with his wife.One skill had come through totally unimpaired - his virtuosity at the Hand Posted Ledgers. It was something ( however petty) to see . Standing at the Stand up Desk, topped with the pidgeon holes. he would take up a batch of deposit slips , read the account number on the top one, his hand would shoot to the appropriate Binder, fly through to the correct account, post the transaction , note the new balance on the deposit slip, initial it and re-insert the Binder in a flash. "There, that's how its done. Now get on with it!"

The Trading Bank ledgers were posted on a simple accounting machine - no Comptometers yet and there was still a handwritten control ledger.

The work was shared by two other young people a good looking curly-haired happy go-lucky young Catholic guy Mick ? and a short rather sullen girl whose Christian names were "Melodie Charlotte Ivy Aloma Phyllis... whatever". I could never forget that assemblage of Christian names!

The Manager of the Branch was a retired Second World War Brigadier who had accepted the Japanese surrender at Rabaul . He was always impeccably dressed in his suit and vest and had a moustache . His desk , like his entire office was a testament to inactivity. He read the Sydney Morning Herald from front to back each morning then came out and stared at the street for about fifteen minutes and would give a damning review of any workmen in the street: "Look at these lazy wretches Mr Wilson - four of them standing about with only one shovel ! One shovel - Four men! Outrageous! Mr. Wilson ,do you hear? " "Yes Sir, of course! Outrageous!" Smirks from the staff and scarcely suppressed laughter from the younger ones.

And that was it really, until one day during the Cuban Missile Crisis the newspapers were brought into the Branch reporting the confrontation between the United States Navy quarantine blockade and a fleet of Russian ships bringing missiles to arm the Cuban bases they had built on the United States doorstep. But Mr Kruschev had badly misjudged the younger President Kennedy. The U.S. Navy stood firm it was Mr Krushchev's ships that had to first stop, and then head home. The world stood back from the nuclear brink. At the same time, my future wife Robyn and best friend Penny, still , together with her husband Keith our oldest friends, was travelling round Ireland and being advised "you had better get back home, it looks like there is going to be a war"!