Bank Trivia Vaults

Some time ago long before 2020, the pandemic year, we had to use the elevator in a bank on Portage and Main because maintenance was busy oiling escalators. We accidentally pressed B, and ended up in the basement.

It was a vault, guarded by a massive steel gate. Behind it was a wall of things that look like brass mailboxes. It was reminiscent of old Hollywood movies, where someone breaks into a vault to steal diamonds Nazis stole from Jews before killing them. Was that a movie based on the book Marathon Man? I don’t remember.

I inched closer to look inside the gate, then a voice said it was a restricted area. Where did security spring from? Anyway, what will banks do with vaults, now that valuables are information packages stored in computers? Industrial billionaires no longer buy their mistresses diamond and gold necklaces. They buy them shares in technology companies. Fine, the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank in March indicates that tech companies are going through a rough patch, but they will rebound.

If wealthy customers no longer use vaults to hide wills, foreign currency or incriminating photos of a Reserve Bank president when he was a young man, what are banks going to do with them? That security guard who cautioned me works for a company. He must be paid. What is he guarding exactly?

A museum. He guards a museum because that is where we keep things that have expired. Summer is coming and all cities have ‘vintage tours.’ They must include bank vaults.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.