Heard you were robbed... Can I bring you a pie?

CARLETON, Neb.
The man entered the intimate Citizens State Bank with a balaclava covering his face and sunglasses shading his eyes. His attire did not seem too out of place, given that workers at the nearby grain elevator are known to wear similar protection against the punishing cold of Nebraska in winter.

Here in Carleton, the standard greeting — “Keeping out of trouble?” — gleans a “Yep” or a “Nope,” both equally reassuring to its population of about 136. But this man stepped up to the counter, with its rack of candy canes and clear view of the silvery vault open in trust, and greeted the teller with: Give me your money.

The salutation received a classic Carleton response, something along the lines of: Are you serious?

The man answered by making sure she saw the pocket of his heavy Carhartt coat, bulging with his hand and maybe something else. Following bank protocol, which says no amount of money is worth a human life, she gave him the cash in her till, all the while taking quiet note of two physical traits. He had fat fingers and a fat nose.

He tucked the money into a zippered pouch and left without availing himself of either a candy cane or one of the complimentary yardsticks jutting from a bucket by the door. As soon as he left, the teller loudly called out words not common in Carleton: We’ve been robbed.

The bank’s president, Michael Van Cleef, came running out of his office, where he had been discussing a farmer’s financial situation with the bank’s loan officer. He looked out the window just in time to see the grimy getaway, in a maroon, dust-caked Grand Am with a spoiler on the back.

The event took all of 55 seconds.

Proper protocol continued. The bank locked down, and someone called 911. Within nine minutes the sheriff’s deputies arrived. Soon came the first of many calls of concern and support, a few of which, a smiling Mr. Van Cleef remembers, went like this: “Hear you’ve been robbed. Can I bring you over a pie?”

In this day of bank bailouts and subprime mortgage debacles, some of us might find Robin Hood charm in a Nebraska bank robbery. Some might whisper the lines to the old Woody Guthrie song romanticizing the violent bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd: “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.”

But the Citizens State Bank in Carleton has no connection to any of those banking conglomerates with names like AmeriCitiComGroup. It is the only branch of a small, family-owned business that has six employees, three of whom are family and none of whom are accustomed to junkets. It has a few hundred customers and about $11 million in loans out.

Its one-story brick building, built as a bank more than 100 years ago, has remained a local fixture while most buildings in downtown Carleton, such as it is, are bricked up or closed up: the old Weddel’s grocery store; the old post office that partially caved in a few years ago; the old Little Café, where Thelma and Shirley sold fresh pies of apple and cherry.

Just outside the bank, a Cargill grain operation grinds away. Truckloads of soybeans and corn are weighed and dumped with a sound like a sigh into the mammoth grain elevators looming over the empty storefronts. Every few minutes, another long Union Pacific freight train loudly announces itself.

Inside the bank, Mr. Van Cleef, 46, is usually helping local farmers figure out how to finance the fertilizer, chemicals, machinery, fuel and irrigation needed to grow their crops, all while guessing what beans and corn will go for. There is no online banking here. It’s all face-to-face, how are you, Mike, see you later down at TJ’s for a burger.

Read the whole story here. And no I don't know if they accept out of state accounts. They don't have a web site.