I went to school at a small women’s college in the small town of Nevada (pronounced Nuh-VAY-duh) Missouri. Back in my day, when you went to college, you had to open a checking account in your college town because it was before debit cards and if you weren’t going to carry cash around all the time, a checking account was what you needed. I put off going to open my account on the special day they had for college students, and then had to force myself to go on another day. It was my first checking account, and seemed like a very big step and I wasn’t quite ready to make that step.
There were (I think) four banks to choose from in Nevada, and I chose Citizens State Bank because they offered a free gift if you opened an account with them. It was a crushing blow to realize I’d sold my choice for a pocket mirror. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this token. However, it was for years my eyebrow plucking mirror as I could prop it on the windowsill and use the natural light to find the stray hairs.
I’ve just realized that this was not the last Citizens I banked with. There was one in Massachusetts, too.
Is Citizens still there? Apparently, it changed even before I left in 1995. It merged in 1994 with the Mercantile Bank of Western Missouri which merged in 1998 with the Mercantile Bank of St. Louis National Association which became in 1999 part of Firstar Bank of Missouri, which merged in 2000 with US Bank. And that bank still exists.
Someday someone is going to write about the many bank mergers of the 90s. They were super annoying and I’m guessing they didn’t help ME any. In Boston I had to keep switching banks because I would find a nice small bank and it would be gobbled up by some conglomerate that wanted to charge me tons of fees because I didn’t have a combined balance of $5000.00.