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c ! Hastings County Historical Socli The Bank of Commerce in Belleville about 1900. he called an employee into the office and left him standing, the person knew everything was OK. If the individual was told to be seated, he knew he was in for a lecture. Denyes was often asked to go to Bill Cook's cigar store on Front Street and buy a pack- age of Buckingham cigarettes for the manager. Regular duties included re- cording and dispatching bank drafts to businesses in the city. It was a common practice then for companies to borrow money using accounts receivable as collateral. Bank drafts were then issued as security and de- livered by messengers. In De- nyes' time at the Commerce, the messenger was Sam Johnston. Also among a junior's re- sponsibilities were the tasks of checking all the envelopes at the end of the day to ensure the messenger had put the proper stamps on them and then balancing the stamp box. At the end of each month, canceled cheques had to be paired with customers' state- ments so they were ready to be given out the following day. It was usually 10 p.m. before this was complete and was even done New Year's Eve. One customer of the bank was Charlotte Sills, a former Bellevillian who moved to Bos- ton and married a wealthy man. Sills returned to Belleville each year to visit rel- atives and Denyes served her at the bank several times. Her chauffeur waited outside with the Mercedes, he recalls. Despite all the regulation and formality, there was one occasion when the staff let their hair down. It was May 15 of each year when Harry Smith's ice company began dropping a block of ice at the front steps of the bank, to be put in the water cooler. The . staff celebrated the event (af- ter the manager had left for the day) by pouring a bottle of gin into the cooler. When Denyes returned to the bank in February, 1946, he found all the tellers were wom- en, something that was un- heard of in the 1930s. He left the bank in 1948 to become city treasurer and is | now retired. Drury Denyes