And that feeling is the reason I spent the next twenty-three weeks doing everything the hard way, and I want it on the record at the front, because if I had been less flattered I would have been finished in nine days.

Part Five: What a Passbook Is

I am going to put the correction here, at the front, because it is the thing that makes the whole of the rest of this worth reading and because I did not learn it until the ninth of December.

A passbook is not an account.

It is a receipt.

It is a paper record, held by the customer, of transactions that are also held — properly, permanently, in a system — by the bank.

For most of the twentieth century it was how a savings account worked: you brought the book in, the teller stamped the new balance into it, and you took it home.