A snowy sky hung dimly over the Yates Center square as I pressed my face against the glass of what was once the State Exchange Bank.
I imagined the teller counter had returned, the bars, the safe and two unassuming young men entering the door in February 1915.
Unmasked and well-dressed, they strolled to the desk around lunchtime and asked whether a “Mr. Hines” had been in.
Before the cashier W.J. O’Donnell could answer, though, he found a .33 caliber revolver staring him in the face.
“Throw yer hands up and hold ‘em high,” growled one of the genteel fellows, as the other scrambled up and crawled through the opening of the teller window.
In four minutes flat, over $4,000 in cash had been liquidated, and in a flash, the thieves were out the door.
I imagined them bursting past me through the exit, causing me to reel backward toward the “painless” dentist office that once stood next door.
No sooner had they gone, but I seemed to hear the muted sound of poor O’Donnell yelling at the top of his lungs from inside the locked vault.
The ghost of a woman named Blanche Winters pressed inside the building, and with keys in hand, managed to free the flabbergasted prisoner.
Soon the hunt was on.
Everyone in town had been beset by a lolling panic, with Model-Ts and rumors tearing about in every direction.
Who were these demonous outsiders who’d dared intrude upon our placid villa? And what terrible disease of sloth and violence had they brought with them?
This is OUR TOWN!!
Get the torches and pitchforks …
JUST in the nick of time, ol’ “Bill” Reedy screeched to a halt in front of the bank, then raced inside to inform Sheriff Carrol he’d spotted the thieves making a break for it on the edge of town.
To reenact the scene, I leapt into my car like the Sheriff and his posse, racing east as closely as possible along the rail trail as if voraciously hunting the license plate of some out-of-town flapper.
