Gary – Page 16 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Between the Turkey and the Tinsel

To me, this is the most stressful time of the year. Thanksgiving is over and all the fall decorations have been taken down, boxed, and stored for another twelve months. As the Thanksgiving boxes go back into the garage, the Christmas boxes get dragged into the house and unpacked. There is no break between the holidays. As soon as one ends, it is time to scramble to get ready for the next one.

Lights, tree, figurines, and garlands all need to be dusted off and strewn around the house to make a more festive atmosphere. If this fails to happen, we risk appearing as if we have insufficient holiday spirit. This isn’t such a problem for me. My annual levels of holiday spirit have historically been low, and I don’t care who figures it out. My wife, however, insists we make the effort every year to celebrate properly.

Hence, the stress.

For the four or five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I feel as if I am in constant motion. I am dragging heavy decorations to and from the garage, putting up lights inside and outside the house, searching for appropriate gifts for family members, and attending gatherings and holiday events I have unsuccessfully attempted to avoid.

It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t used to mind this time of year. Of course, that was before I got married and had children. When it was just me, I could stay home and only do the things I wanted to do. I didn’t have to be anywhere or try to impress anyone. I had no obligations. If I felt like it, I could sit on the couch, watch television, and eat cheesecake with a pair of chopsticks.

For clarification: the cheesecake was leftover from Thanksgiving and was the only food left in the refrigerator. I was using chopsticks because I didn’t have any other clean utensils.

Don’t judge me.

Anyway, now I have responsibilities to other people. I can’t just hide and ignore the world in December like I used to do. I also have clean forks, and real food in the refrigerator, so there are tradeoffs. Some things have improved. The tree is also much nicer these days. We have nine feet of plastic, pre-lit, fireproof tree and enough decorations to cover the entire thing completely.

Twice.

When my wife and I first lived together, we had a plastic tree then, too. However, it was only 18 inches tall and we decorated it with six, green glass balls and six, red glass balls that we bought from an ornament display at Home Depot. We also had a cat that thought the balls were a lot of fun to play with, which is why today we only have one surviving green ball that we still hang on the tree every year as a reminder of those first couple Christmases together.

That first tree didn’t have many lights on it, either. We had to put it on a table with a lamp right next to it for any real illumination. Our current tree not only has more lights than I can count, but my wife recently hooked up the plug to Wi-Fi, so if she wants to turn those lights on all she has to do is say, “Turn on the Christmas tree.”

Poof! Lights.

Although, to be fair, our tree was always like that. The only difference is, in the past, when my wife said, “Turn on the Christmas tree,” she was talking to me.

I wish my wife could figure out other parts of the holiday preparation to hook up automatically to Wi-Fi. I wish I could say, “Put lights on the house,” or “Pick out presents for family.” Unfortunately, those things I still have to do for myself.

With just one week remaining before Christmas I feel very behind in my chores this year. There are colored lights that are still just sitting in boxes, and I need to figure out what to get EM1 and EM2. Despite the fact they both deserve coal in their stockings, my wife insists that we get them real gifts. I suggested we could gift them a full year of living in our house without paying any rent, but she failed to find any humor in my idea.

The clock is ticking. I’m running out of time and the tension is building. In another week, it will all finally be behind us, but for right now I’m pretty stressed out. I’m looking forward to January, when we can all look back on a wonderful Christmas and celebrate the fact we don’t have to do it again for another year.

Or we can look back at the disaster that was Christmas, and the reason that mommy took the kids and left daddy. I’ll be honest, at this point there’s no telling which way it’s going to go.

But either way, it will be over soon.

Merry Christmas!

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.

To Serve and Protect, or Whatever

In 2016, I retired from law enforcement after 25 years of being a police officer in northern California. I believe I have mentioned this before. Prior to 25 years as a police officer, I spent 25 years not being a police officer and having no idea that I would ever be a police officer. So, how did I end up driving a black and white sedan with lights on the roof?

Let me tell you about it.

In 1989, I was finishing up my final year at UC Davis. I was about a month away from graduating with a B.S. in Genetics. I thought I had my career all planned out at that point. Get a job with the local genetics research firm in Vacaville, work my way up the corporate ladder, collect stock options and a high six-figure salary, then retire at 35 with more money than I knew what to do with.

That was the plan.

The first step was getting through a job interview with the genetics company that my entire career path hinged upon. The job I was applying for was basically an entry level lab assistant. It would be my task to wash up the lab as the more senior people completed various tasks.

Okay, to be more accurate, they needed a dish washer. Someone to clean up test tubes and petri dishes.

During the interview, I was told that, due to the number of candidates applying for the job, a B. S. was insufficient to secure the position. They told me to feel free to reapply when I had completed my Master’s Degree program.

The only problem was that I had absolutely no intention of staying in school any longer. Certainly not long enough to go for an M.S.

I didn’t get the job. I was at the end of my schooling and had no idea what I was going to do next. The path I had imagined I would follow had just disappeared like a bread crumb trail in a windstorm … a windstorm full of hungry birds.

It was at this time that I called up my good friend, Wes Blalock. I needed someone to be a sympathetic ear and I thought he would be a good place to start. I was wrong. His advice was something along the lines of, “I don’t have time to listen to your whiny shit right now. Why don’t you come see me the next time you come down to San Jose.” This was followed by the sound of dial tone.

Have I mentioned that Wes is my best friend?

So, I did go see him the next time I was in San Jose. Wes was working as a police officer at that time and he suggested I do a ride-along with him during one of his shifts.

“So we can talk?” I asked.

“No. So you can see what real problems look like.”

Again … best friend.

I did the suggested ride-along. Sometime during the night, amidst the fast driving, foot pursuits, and one particularly messy drunk driving arrest, I got the idea that maybe I should be a police officer, too. I figured, if I can’t get a job with a genetics company, I guess I can do this.

I suggested the idea to Wes and he just shook his head like I had suggested if we flapped our arms hard enough we could get the patrol car to fly.

It was not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, and it should have disappeared the next day after a good night’s sleep, but for some reason it stuck with me. I even went home to tell my parents that I had decided to become a police officer.

My mom rolled her eyes and said, “You could get that job with a G.E.D. Why did we bother to send you to college?”

My dad looked up from the television long enough to say, “You owe us $40,000,” then went back to watching MTV music videos. Or, maybe it was a nature program. It was definitely one of the two, since he never watched anything else.

Still looking for validation, I called my grandfather. He was the only person in our family that had actually been a police officer. He worked for the Los Angeles Police Department during the 1920’s and 30’s and was a beat cop during prohibition and the Great Depression. I figured if anyone would appreciate the choice I was making, it would be him.

After I told him my decision, there was a long pause on the phone. He finally said, “Okay.” I thought that would be the end of it, but he suddenly added, “You’re kind of small. You know they’re going to kill you, right?”

Well, with support like that from my family and friends, how could I not become a cop? It was like Destiny tapping me on the shoulder and pointing down a sun-lit path, saying, “In that direction lies happiness, wealth, and contentment.” Then Destiny pointed at a dark briar patch and said, “But f**k that. You should go that way. Show all those assholes they’re wrong.”

So, with my injured pride leading the way, I leapt into the briar patch.

Twenty-five years later, I have successfully proved everybody wrong. I would love to rub their noses in it, but my grandfather and parents are all dead now, so… it kind of takes the fun out of it. It’s like successfully surviving a dangerous dare, but it killed all your friends. There’s nobody left to celebrate your stupidity with.

Wes is still alive, but I can’t talk to him. He’s still convinced he never should have taken me out on that ride-along.

I guess I’ll just have to take a pyrrhic victory lap on my own.

By the way, my advice to anyone who is thinking about becoming a police officer today is this: listen to your friends and family and run in the opposite direction just as fast as you possibly can. In the immortal words of my grandfather, “You’re kind of small. You know they’re going to kill you, right?”

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.

Lawn Mower Blues

My wife on the riding mower in our back yard.

My wife broke our lawn mower.

Technically, the lawn mower broke while my wife was using it, but it’s just more fun to say that my wife broke our lawn mower. I am usually the person that has my hands on anything mechanical when it decides to die or blow up so, for a change, I get to blame someone else. That doesn’t happen often, and I want to take full advantage of the opportunity.

My wife volunteered to mow the lawn recently on a Saturday to help out with some of the yard work. It was a very nice offer on her part. She sat down on our riding mower, started up the engine, then drove it into the back yard.

Two minutes later, she was back in the house telling me, “I think there’s something wrong with the lawn mower.”

I asked her what she meant by “something wrong.”

She told me, “I don’t know. It stopped working.”

I followed her outside to the back lawn, and she pointed to our mower. She had left it parked in the grass. It looked fine at first, but then I saw the problem. There was a little bit of smoke trickling from under the engine cover, and the drive belt that ran the mower blades was spooled out on the lawn underneath it like the eviscerated guts of some unfortunate animal.

“Something wrong” was a bit of an understatement.

I asked my wife to move the mower back to the garage. I said I would fix it later, knowing full well that I do not have the mechanical skills to “fix” anything more complicated than tightening a screw. (Righty tighty – lefty loosey).

Still, I figured I should give it a look.

I pulled out the owner’s manual for the mower and researched replacing the drive belt. It didn’t look that hard. The dude in the illustration on page 23 didn’t look like he was much smarter than me. And he was smiling. So, how bad could it be?

I lay down on the ground next to the mower, grabbed the belt and slipped it around the first guide wheel. The guide wheel, mounting bracket, and left mower blade all fell off of the mower and into my hands.

Okay. This was going to be a much bigger job than I originally anticipated. Time to go with plan B.

Plan B is the power equipment repair shop thirty miles away. I called the shop and told them I had a broken mower. They told me to bring it in. I explained that bringing it to them might be a bit of problem for me since I don’t have any way to transport anything bigger than a bicycle. When I asked if they could pick it up, since I don’t have a trailer to transport it, they gave me a phone number for a guy who does pick-ups and deliveries to their business.

Let me just say that part again: not a company that does pick-ups. “A guy.”

Nervous, but willing to give it a go, I called their “guy.” The phone rang a few times, then picked up.

“Yup.”

“Um. Is this … Gus?”

“Yup. Who’s this?”

“I was told you might be able to help me move my lawn mower to the repair shop. I need it picked up and transported to get it fixed.”

“Sure. I guess I could do that for you. Where do you live?”

Did any of that sound like a legitimate business transaction? Because to me it felt like the opening scene from a horror movie, and I had just invited some homicidal stranger over to my house to make me his next victim.

Gus, the delivery guy, wanted $125 to pick up the mower. I thought that was a little steep just to carry a lawn mower thirty miles away, but I was sort of stuck. My choices were to pay Gus to move it or live with a giant orange paperweight in my garage for the foreseeable future. I elected to move it.

Gus arrived later that day with his flatbed trailer, then asked for payment up front before he loaded my mower. Again, as I had limited options, I paid him.

He placed a metal ramp from the ground to the back edge of his trailer, then started to drive my mower up onto the flatbed. About halfway up, the ramp slipped off the truck and Gus and my mower came crashing back down to the ground. Gus fell off the mower and landed in the gravel that paves my driveway.

Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so bad about the hundred and twenty-five bucks. After all, it wasn’t me sprawled out in the driveway next to a broken lawn mower.

After making sure the lawn mower hadn’t gotten any additional damage in the fall, I asked Gus if he was okay. He stood up, made sure there wasn’t any blood on him or bones jutting in odd angles, then nodded.

“Good,” I said. “We get lousy cell phone reception out here and I didn’t want to go all the way back in the house to call for an ambulance.”

Gus said some stuff, but I probably shouldn’t repeat it since I don’t have age restricting software on my blog. He wasn’t very happy.

Trying to be helpful, I reminded him that the mower still wasn’t in the trailer and the repair shop was expecting it to arrive soon. He said some other stuff I won’t repeat.

Gus was not a very pleasant person. After almost getting squashed by a lawn mower I guess I can’t really blame him for that. Eventually, he did get my mower into his trailer and he drove off to get it repaired.

The whole thing was quite an ordeal, and I still blame my wife for the whole thing. After all, she is the one who broke the lawn mower and caused the whole mess.

In a way, she almost killed Gus.

I’m going to tell him that the next time I see him. I’d rather he was mad at her than at me.

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.

Thanksgiving the Hard Way

Another Thanksgiving weekend has arrived. Families are gathering around a large dead bird and announcing the things that have occurred in the past year that have made them thankful. My family is no exception.

At our house, Thanksgiving is a bit of a big deal. The entire extended family gathers for the full weekend and doesn’t leave until the last cranberry in the house has been consumed. But this wasn’t always the case for me. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a somewhat smaller affair.

In the Wilbanks household, Thanksgiving was not a huge gathering or celebration. I remember in school I would do all the typical Thanksgiving things – cut out hand-shaped turkeys, paste together brown and tan paper chains, and assemble pinecone and peanut butter bird feeders – but most of that stuff found its way into the garbage can before the turkey in the oven was even brown.

On the day itself, it was typically a small gathering in our house. My dad’s parents had both died before I was nine, and my mom’s parents rarely bothered to come to our house. I suppose the 90-minute drive from San Juan Bautista was just too much of an ordeal for them (although if we ever failed to drive to their house for Christmas dinner, we would hear about it from my grandmother nonstop for the next year). My mom’s brother and his wife would show up on occasion, but since they lived in Los Angeles at the time it was understandable that they usually stayed home.

My dad’s many brothers and sisters all had their own family obligations so, we never saw any of them. Besides, all of the aunts and uncles and cousins on my dad’s side of the family got together once a year for a family reunion in the summer, and by Thanksgiving most of the fights and arguments that occurred at the reunion hadn’t yet been resolved. I will probably delve into the Wilbanks Family Reunions in more detail in a later blog. For now, let’s stay focused on Thanksgiving.

My two brothers are both much older than I am, and they had already moved out of the house by the time I was eight. They would, however, both come over on Thanksgiving to eat with us. My oldest brother, Dennis would typically show up late on Thanksgiving Day. The rest of us would already be eating when his beat-up Camaro would pull into the driveway. He showed up, said hi to my dad, then asked him for money because he needed gas in his car, or he was behind on his rent. My mom would hand him a paper plate, point at the half-mutilated carcass of the turkey, and tell him to get something to eat before she threw it all away.

Dennis would fix a plate of food, then go ask dad for money again.

I remember one year was a little different from the others, however. Dennis arrived, late as usual, but when mom handed him a plate, he said, “No thanks. I stopped and ate a couple burgers on the way here.” I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I absolutely believe he stopped for burgers on the way to a Thanksgiving meal, I just couldn’t believe he said it out loud to mom’s face. Dennis was never the most socially adept person I knew, but I thought he had at least had enough survival instincts not to poke a sleeping bear.

Turns out I was dead wrong.

To be fair to Dennis, mom was not the best cook in the neighborhood. Her turkey was typically just shy of being inedible. By the time she was done baking it, the turkey had the taste of sawdust but had a slightly lower moisture content.

It was the same meal every year. There were black olives that, as soon as they hit the table, I grabbed up ten of them (one on each finger, of course) then ran off before my mom could yell at me to wait for the rest of the food. The olives were followed by the bright red tube of cranberry sauce that still retained the shape of the can it came out of, and a plate of yams with marshmallow on top that nobody ever touched but mom insisted on making anyway. It was a family “tradition,” she said. Apparently throwing away an entire plate of untouched yams every year was also a “tradition” in our house.

Next came the bland, gluey, mashed potatoes. Eating them was like eating the paste they gave you in kindergarten, only with slightly less flavor. My grandmother always made great mashed potatoes with plenty of milk and butter because … well, because she was a normal person. However, she never bothered to pass that particular recipe down to my mom who figured a little salt added to that glutenous mass was all the seasoning it needed. On a few occasions she would put down a little bowl of gravy to go with the potatoes, but the stuff had the color and consistency of motor oil that badly needed to be changed. I never had the courage to find out what it tasted like.

The only part of the meal I looked forward to (besides the olives) was the stuffing. Stove Top stuffing hit the market in 1972, and it reached the Wilbanks Thanksgiving meal a few years after that. All you needed to do was put all the stuff in the box into a pot of boiling water and stir. Even my mom had a hard time ruining that part of the meal. Not that she didn’t try. There were frequently burned bits from the bottom of the pot that she would stir into the rest of the stuffing to “hide” her mistake.

Still, it was the best thing on the table. And it was usually gone by the time I got close enough to the table to fill up my plate. One box of stuffing is supposed to feed four people. There were five of us. So … go figure.

Don’t get me wrong. I have fond memories of Thanksgiving as I was growing up as well. It wasn’t all bad.

There were olives.

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.

Up On The Roof

I hate heights. I think I have mentioned this particular phobia before. It’s the reason we have trees that have never been trimmed, lights in the ceiling that will never be replaced, and Christmas lights on our eaves that went up the first year we moved in and are never coming back down.

I don’t like climbing ladders if they have more than four of five steps. By the time you get to step six, anything in your immediate vicinity was completely over your head while you were on the ground. If you don’t look up, why worry about whatever is there?

My dad didn’t like heights much, either. While I have no idea if phobias have a genetic component to them, if they do, I definitely inherited the trait from him. He was, however, a much braver person than I will ever be. Despite the fact he detested climbing up on ladders, it was his job to climb up onto the roof whenever one of us kids threw something up there.

There was always something on our roof when I was growing up. It was like a magnet that attracted toys. On any given day, you could find a frisbee, a football, tennis ball, tennis racket, somebody’s sandwich, and a pair of shoes on our roof. Whenever something previously landbound found its way up there, my dad was the one expected to drag the ladder out of the garage, climb onto the cracked wooden shingles covering our house, and throw down the detritus.

When I was about nine, I remember my dad finally got completely fed up retrieving our stuff from the top of the house. He warned me and my brothers that the next item we lost something on the roof, we would have to go up and get it ourselves. I suggested simply leaving the stuff up there whenever we lost an item, but my dad said something about the eventual weight breaking through and leaving a hole in our ceiling. I don’t think he was exaggerating, either.

The first item I had to retrieve myself was a baseball. I tossed it up on the roof and was practicing catching it when it rolled off the edge. On one particular throw, the ball got stuck in the rain gutter. I went to get my dad. He pulled the ladder out of the garage, balanced it against the roof, pointed upward and said, “Go, get it.”

I hated climbing up the shaky, wooden, deathtrap. 1970’s ladders were designed for one thing and one thing only: to murder children.

After that adventure, I tried really hard not to lose anything on the roof ever again. One time, my dad found me sitting on the front lawn, just staring at the street. He asked me, “Where’s your football.”

I just shrugged and muttered something like, “I put it away.”

“Where did you put it?”

I shrugged again.

My dad looked up on the roof and immediately spotted my football stuck up against the brick chimney. He pointed at the garage and told me to get the ladder. My life had become absolute hell.

It was one of my brothers that eventually saved me from my frequent rooftop adventures. He gave me an empty whiskey bottle, then told me to stick it in the rain gutter and leave it there until the next time dad made me climb up on the roof.

In those days, my dad was still drinking pretty heavily. Some weekends, he would drink so much he forgot where he was or what he was doing while he was there. Now, we call that being blackout drunk. Back then, my brothers and I referred to it as “dad’s Friday night.”

A few days after I planted the whiskey bottle, I threw something else up onto the roof. I don’t remember exactly what it was. It could have been a frisbee, or maybe the neighbor’s dog. I forget.

My dad dragged out the ladder and told me to climb. This time, as soon as I got high enough to see into the rain gutter, I pulled out the bottle and held it out so my dad could see it.

“How did this get here?” I asked, pretending I had never seen it before.

My dad looked startled, confused, and guilty all at the same time.

“Do you think I should tell mom that somebody threw a bottle on top of our house?”

“No. There’s no need for that,” he said.

“Do you think I ever need to climb up on this ladder again?” I asked.

This was the first time that my dad realized that I was a little asshole and that I wasn’t above blackmail to get what I wanted.

To make a long story short, the bottle ended up in the trash and I never climbed on the roof again. My dad never learned the truth about how the bottle actually got there, and he quit drinking completely a couple years later. I consider that a win-win.

Today, there is nobody to force me to climb ladders or go on the roof. I don’t make EM1 or EM2 do it either. I don’t think either one of them is afraid of heights, but just in case, I don’t really want to find out what kind of dirt those kids have on me. Blackmail might be genetic, too.

So, we’ll all just stay safely on the ground.

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.

Two Years Already?

This week marks two years that Deep Dark Thoughts has been haunting the internet. Boy, time sure flies when you’re angry at the world and have a lot of useless crap to say about it. Weekly observations, rants, and general frustration with the people and events around me have filled these pages every Thursday for twenty-four months, and I see no reason to stop now.

Going into year three, however, I thought I might change things up just a bit. I think I have made it pretty clear to anyone reading these blogs that I am basically a cranky introvert that doesn’t trust people I don’t know, and has grave reservations about the ones that I do. But where did all that antisocial angst come from? It didn’t just appear overnight.

The answer to that question is not a simple one. It can’t be explained in just a few minutes, or even a few hours. I have had fifty-three years of experience and anecdotal evidence to support my conclusions that people are out to get me and the world is a horrible place, and it would take another fifty-three years to share it all with you here in DDT.

So, let’s get started.

Going forward, I will share not just the day to day disappointments my family and friends put me through, but I will also be giving readers a glimpse at the history of my life as I understand it. In other words: the day to day disappointments from my family and friends from years ago.

I have been feeling rather nostalgic lately, and I figured it was time to start sharing some of the older, more ridiculous moments in my life. We shall see soon enough if this is a brilliant idea, or just the beginning of the end for this blog.

In previous blogs, I have mentioned my perfectionist mother who lost her mind, as well as my alcoholic father. We may delve a little deeper into my relationships with those two people. I have been told that writing can be therapeutic, so we’ll give it a shot. Hopefully, it will also be entertaining to anyone curious enough to read about my early life growing up in a typical (?) 1970’s family.

I have also mentioned that I am a retired police officer. Perhaps I will write about how I got into law enforcement as a career and share a few stories about my days on the mean streets of California. I should probably check with my attorney first to make sure the stories I mention have all passed the statute of limitations for prosecutions.

By the way, what is the penalty for transporting an unconscious hooker over state lines? Just asking for a friend.

I taught martial arts for many years. I could write about that a little bit; discuss the ramifications of teaching hormonal teenagers the best locations on the human body to attack when trying to kill a person or knock them unconscious. There is definitely a reason that insurance premiums are through the roof for karate dojos.

What else should I talk about?

Well, what do you want to know? As a reader, has there been a past article you read that you wished I would elaborate on? Do you have questions you want me to answer, or are there comments I made that left you wanting further discussion on the topic?

Email me or post your comments below on this page. Let me know what interests you. Or just tell me what parts, if any, of the past two years of Deep Dark Thoughts you have enjoyed (or not enjoyed) the most.

For me, the best parts have been the comments and responses from friends and family who have read my blog. Thank you to everyone who has been on this journey with me for this long. I appreciate your encouragement, laughter, and willingness to recognize this is all just for entertainment and amusement.

I also enjoy the complaints from people claiming that I have grossly exaggerated the truth, and could I please stop making them look bad. Mostly I hear this from my kids, and I always tell them if they stop behaving like idiots, I will stop writing about them.

Clearly neither of us is going to stop.

To summarize: Happy second birthday, Deep Dark Thoughts. Here is to year three, and hopefully there will be many more.

Next week, we get back to business and discuss how Santa Claus is not the only person that has been climbing around on the Wilbanks’ rooftop. I hope you come back to see what I mean.

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.