By Mary Matthews 

      Lawrence Jones, the 90-year-old president of First Bank and Trust of Idaho, is a banker who would rather be a sheepman. 

Jones looks with disfavor on borrowing and paying interest. 

In recalling his youth, Jones sees his life as much easier than that of his parents, but thinks they knew how to better enjoy what they had. 

“Life is so much easier now, due to all the conveniences we have,” Jones said. 

His parents, married in 1882, knew privation and hardship because what they needed could not be obtained, he explained. They went shoeless not only because shoes were expensive and cash in short supply, but because shoes had to come by wagon train, from the railhead at Corinne, Utah. 

The railroad’s arrival in 1907 at Malad effected the biggest single change because it allowed goods and people to move about more easily. Daily excursions to Salt Lake City 100 miles south became a popular pastime. Two daily trains allowed the round trip to be made in one day, if the traveler so decided, instead of the week or so it took by wagon and horses. 

Then, when electricity became available in 1914, that again dramatically changed lives. Jones looks at 1914 as a year of many changes – mostly brought about by the automobile. 

It was in 1914 that he and Barney (Basco) Jones, not a relative, started selling Model-T  

Fords. Barney had earned his nickname by his association with Jones in the sheep industry. They sold as many as six cars a day, at $400 each, with no options, no trade-ins and a good share of them for spot cash. 

On each car, their gross profit was around $50, Jones said. Only three service stations were in town then. During snowy and muddy weather, they reverted back to horses as roads were unpaved and not maintained during those periods.  

Also about this time, Jones went into the theatre business and at one time operated two theatres. One featured Friday and Saturday serials and cowboy movies, he recalled. It was torn down 30 years or so ago. Movies brought a glimpse of adventure, drama, and fun, as well as education, to formerly isolated areas. 

Summers, while earning his degrees from the University of Utah at Salt Lake City in 1916, Jones worked with sheep, going into summer range with them in the Soda Springs area. He loved the outdoor life and enjoyed working with sheep. 

When World War I broke out in 1918, Jones enlisted in the Army and spent 18 months in France, fighting in trenches from Paris to the Marne River, driving back the German forces. He recalls it as “terrible for us then as it is now.” Two years after he came home, he married Marie Covert. They celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on June 22. 

Irrigation, wells and piped sprinkler systems, flour milling, the resettlement program in the 1930s and 1940s, all had important impacts on the county, Jones says. It is with obvious pride he also points to banking service as a seldom noticed but very influential aspect of community change, affecting not only the economy but lives. 

Jones, called Lawrence by his employees and customers alike, also calls them by first names, and it is the impersonalization of big banking that is most alarming to him. 

“Everything is getting bigger, and that is not bad,” Jones said, “but I liked it better when we knew each customer and could really be friends with him.” 

Jones joined the family banking enterprise in 1929, just in time to see the worst financial debacle of this century. Checking account balances fell as low as $64,000 at one time, he recalled. Savings account balances, with interest at two percent or even below, held steady and never did drop that low, he said. 

Oneida County was fortunate to have two local banks with good financial backgrounds that provided financial stability and resources to the community for many years, he said. Competition between the banks is friendly and “good for them and us, and our customers,” Jones says. He commented that while much shopping is done out-of-town, most banking is done in town at either of the two banks. They also draw out-of-town customers and loyal families who have moved away. 

The only time the two banks were ever closed was during the bank holiday declared by President Franklin Roosevelt. Neither ever had a “run” on their accounts. Jones cites as one of the most important events affecting “all of us” was establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that insures bank accounts against loss. 

During the Depression, he used to “look at the papers every day and banks were falling like flies on a cold night.” This meant that depositors could get absolutely nothing for their funds on deposit if the bank had no assets, wiping out lifetime savings, businesses, farms and government entities with deposits. Not many remember the panic caused by the bank holiday, when people were caught without any cash, and no way to obtain any, Jones said. 

Now, if a bank is in danger of going under, depositors do not make a “run” on it to get their funds; they are assured payment through the FDIC. 

Bankers who went through the Depression are more cautious, Jones feels, noting that the new generation of bankers never has had such an experience.  

Without banking service, communities are stymied in growth, Jones notes. Local banks can support individual, public and commercial projects shunned by bigger institutions. 

Jones said he always tried to have cash to buy what he needed to improve his sheep industry, and his…(article stops here).