The Frenchtown Union National Bank on Bridge Street installed a new vault in 1923. One September morning in 1926 it disappointed the bankers.
The time lock malfunctioned, and the vault could not be opened on time. Besides the bank's usual daily need for cash, it was payday at the porcelain factory. The Milford bank agreed to make a short-term loan of $10,000, which would be almost $138,000 in today's dollars. It seems like a lot, and it was a lot. So a trusted man was sent to get it.
He was Austin M. Pendleton. Although he was only 23, he had been the bank's bookkeeper for five years. He went armed with a revolver and driving a car borrowed from co-worker Russell W. Bloom, son of the CEO.
This is where you think: And he and the money were never seen again. But no, he returned with the money. Wild-eyed and breathless, he said that on the way back, a man on the roadside had pointed a gun at him and ordered him to pull over.
But Pendleton wasn't having it. He stomped on the accelerator and drove on. The gunman fired at him, and at this point in his narrative, Pendleton held up his hand to show a bullet hole in his coat sleeve. There was a corresponding hole where the bullet had gone through the back of Bloom's car. Pendleton was looking 10 feet tall.
The State Police were summoned to investigate and, hopefully, catch the gunman. But under questioning, Pendleton broke down and admitted that there'd been no bandit, and that he had made up the whole heroic tale, even manufacturing corroborative evidence by shooting his own sleeve. His creativity and eagerness to impress the boss went unrewarded. In fact, he was fired.
But he didn't leave the area. He continued living in Alexandria Township with his mother, Jennie. Census enumerators list him as a well driller in 1930 and as an officer in a boys' reformatory, probably the one near Annandale, in 1940.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
Comentarios