One day the legendary banker Amadeo Peter Giannini (whose Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association weathered the Depression and become the largest privately owned bank in the world) asked a distinguished looking grey-haired gentleman to get him a taxi. When the man dutifully obliged, Giannini gave him a quarter. The recipient, clearly embarrassed, explained that he was the head of the Los Angeles Bank of America. Giannini duly apologised, took back the quarter, and gave him a dollar.

[Giannini's father, a farmer, died when A.P. was seven -- in a fight over a dollar.]