When I was a kid, I remember my father going out to run
errands early on Saturday mornings. In
that era, the term “banker’s hours” was not a metaphor but a reality, and you
paid in cash for everything but expensive items, for which you used a bank
card, or a store-issued credit card like at Strawbridge’s. The bank was always on the run, as was the
post office, to buy stamps or to mail things that he wanted delivered early in
the following week. You weren’t going to
use a card to buy your coffee at Wawa.
At the grocery store, you cashed a paper check.
Philadelphia’s Girard Bank was among the first to open automated tellers, called “George” and set in climate-controlled glass
booths. If you are tempted to call
George “an ATM machine” then please go somewhere else and figure out what the “M”
in ATM represents. George was an exciting novelty and my father taught me how
to use it as soon as he figured it out.
With George, he could get cash outside of banker’s hours, but the post
office still closed by noon on Saturday, and the dry cleaners was only open
until 1 and the hardware store until sometime in the afternoon. If the state store – another tale for another
time – was on the list then it also had short hours on Saturday.
Nothing was open on Sunday.
That’s how it was on Saturday mornings, men getting out to take care of
things that they could not do during the week.
There was a mission and a plan.
It wasn’t a frenzy but he had to get moving at a decent hour and keep
moving until he finished.
When I worked at Strawbridge and Clothier, from time to time
we would open very early on a Saturday morning, maybe 7. I liked working those shifts. For the first few hours of the day, the only
customers were men buying – not shopping – alone. They would come in, ask what they wanted to
know, buy what they needed, and move on.
It's still this way. On a Saturday morning, from dawn to about
nine, give or take, depending on the location and the time of year, the world
is in Guy Time. You will see men with
errands to run and things that have to be done.
I spend most Saturday mornings at my Masonic lodge, learning
how to be a better Mason and a better man.
It’s the same group of brothers each week. True to form, we are working, but we are also
checking in with each other. I won’t go
into the details, which are really beside the point anyway. If I’m not at the lodge then I’m probably at
my church, with the Bad Boys for Jesus, doing what needs to be done there.
Most of the world sleeps late on Saturday morning most of
the time and I get it, totally understand the appeal, but in the quiet of the
empty streets and businesses, the conversation that says enough to get it said
without wasting a word, the dry humor, the pervasive practicality, the sense of
accomplishment and certainty of responsibilities met, there is something about
being a man. That is Saturday morning Guy
Time.
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