Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized IN TiUS ISSUE The Great American Motor Rallye •...............•... Meet a Foreigner . .. Christma~ Cocktail Party Pictures. ............... Public Disclosure Authorized The following statement was made by Mr. Andrew N. Overby at the last Executive Directors' meeting in 1955. We think his words are most fitting as a thought for the New Year. "Mr. Chairman: "This, I believe. will be the last meeting of the year. and I think it is appropriate at this time not only to extend to the management and staff of the Bank the Board's Christmas greetings. but also their deep appreciation. of the work and able and efficient discharge of duty on behalf of the staff• . They wish also to pay tribute to the leadership of the management of the Bank which has taken us through another difficult year and. we think, without running afoul of too many rocks, and has taken us into some new and perhaps even interesting horizons lying ahead of us. "So with those words. we expres~ our appreciation, as well as our Christmas greetings to you and all the members of the staff, sir." CHRISTMAS CARDS RE<:;EIVED BY THE BANK, 1955 The First National Ciiy Bank of Caisse d'Epargne de L 'Etat, New York Luxembourg Amsterdamsche Bank The Workers' Bank Ltd., Israel Governor of the Bank of Greece Landsbanki Islands La Asociacion Mexicana de Caminos Central Hidroelectrica del Rio Federal Reserve Bank of New York Anchicaya, Limitada,. Colombia Bank of the Ryukyus Comptoir National d'Escompte de Banque de France Paris Industrial Development Bank of The Trust Company of Cuba Turkey Central Office of Information, Malta Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij. La Campania Panamena de Aceites. N.V. S.A•• Panama Turkiye Garanti Bankasi Banco Alianca do Rio de Janeiro, Bank Melli iran S.A.. Brazil Bank for International Settlements Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas The Chartered Bank of India. City Austr.alia and China Union Bank of Switzerland New York Life Insurance Company Banque Be1ge d'Afrique Nissan Kisen Kaisha. Ltd. National Bank of Belgium Banco Nacional de Panama Osterreichische Landerbank. Vienna COntinued on Pa,e 12 2 ! by Garrick M. Lightowler Since the war there has been a fantastic growth of public interest in motor sport in general, and in the Rally in particular. However, a rally is not a race, but a timed trial which tests the skill of the driver, the accuracy of the navigator, and the reliability of the automobile, and is an event in which the average driver can participate with his own car and still have a reasonable chance of success. The raIl y is organized on the open road, and usually when bad weather can be expected. Rallies vary in duration from the Sunday afternoon club affair, covering as little as 75 to 100 miles, to the big Australian Reliability Trial which covers 12,000 miles of arid desert and bush tracks. ~ respective of duration all rallies are run against the stop-watch and drivers have to be at certain places at certain predetennined times, losing points for split-second tardiness or early arrival. In fact to be early is a greater sin than being late for it indicates that, as the time schedules have been worked out according to the prevailing speed limits, the competitor has been speeding. Arriving early at a check­ point often means disqualification. The most famous rally of all is the Monte Carlo Rally which is held every year in January and has starting points at Athens, Lisbon, falermo, Oslo, Munich, The Hague, and Glasgow. On arrival at Monte Carlo, after four days and three nights of continuous driving over the French Alps (in the middle of winter!), there are elimination tests for the first 100 competitors. To finish the Monte Carlo Rally is credit­ able; to win an award shows very skillful driving. There is/ nothing quite the same as the Monte Carlo RaiIy in the United States, but the Great American Mountain Rallye, run every 3 November, is an attempt in this direction. I had the great honor last year (1955) to be invited by the Foreign Products Branch of the Ford Motor Company to co-drive one of their "work"- entered cars in this American event and I jumped at the opportunity. For 1955 the Rallye was divided into two phases. The first phase was a warming-up section of over 1,000 miles, with only one timed reliability section (between ,Baltimore and New York); the second phase was the Rallye proper, with more than 1,500 miles of main and secondary roads, and country lanes winding round and round over the snow-covered mountains near the Canadian border. We started from the front of the Sheraton-Park Hotel in Washington, D. C. on the morning of Monday, November 21 and headed south for Wilson and Charlotte in North Carolina and Bluefield in West Vir ginia, and then north to Baltimore, arriving at the Park-Belvedere Hotel on Tuesday evening. This section was easy as the roads were dry and the weather bright and sunny. From Baltimore onwards we ran against the clock continuously and soon after leaving the main road we ran into trouble.. Route in­ structions are always very precise and those issued throughout this event were no exception. But, you can lose your way, particularly if you are looking for a hidden turn-off at the same time that you are trying to work out where you should be, having traveled 96.8 miles at 25.6 mph. This happened to us and we carried on for nearly 5 miles before convincing ourselves we were no longer following the correct road. Going out of our way 5 miles meant that we had to retrace our tracks and lose in all 10 miles - and at 25.8 mph. that means a loss of something around 25 minutes. After battling the rush hour traffic leading into the Lincoln Tunnel, we finally made the Park-Sheraton Hotel in New York and clocked in five minutes late ­ more points lost! At a very early, and still dark, hour on Thanksgiving morning we started the Rallye in earnest. It was not mandatory for all cars to Continued on Pa,e JO The Monte Carlo Rally, Ig55: (Left): A sedate Daimler sedan is put throu,h a final apeed teat. (Ri,ht): The French .Alpa in January, ..ith a small 3-cylinder DK" participatin, in the Rally. MEET A FOREIGNER by Giuseppe Mo"a Stories about adjusting to a new environment are almost always entertaining. Here "Joe" Mo"a recalls with tongue in cheek some of his experiences when going through that difficult period. Other staff members are invited to tell their stories in the pages of Bank Notes. On the day of my arrival in the land of Uncle Sam I was forced to realize an awful thing - I knew very little English, and contrary to my hopes, I was barely able to say "I am glad to be here." I could have said it in Italian or in one of our many dialects, but still no one would have understood me. My first step in the new land, then, was to enroll in a school where I could study English. As the Italian Ministry of Education had not felt it imperative to endow me with a scholarship, I soon discovered that I was confronted with another obstacle - a forthcoming financial deficit. Since at that time I was not a staff member of the I.B.R~D. and did not have "free access" to the World Bank safe, I decided upon a part-time job as the only honorable and possible solution. My first job was officially designated "flower presser" and con­ sisted of placing rhythmically at high speed paper-made leaves of various types of flowers in a very hot mold and dishing out a finished product. The factory was located in a dirty basement of an old house on Third Avenue or, as the poets nostalgically refe,r to it, The Bowery. A few weeks later I switched to mechanics and learned how to repair refrigerators (sorry, but my services are no longer available) in an unbearably hot shop, uptown. After that I, decided to go back to -Noblesse" and became a stock clerk: only twenty dollars a week, but it was a swanky department store. Once again my stomach had to bow before refinement. After having satisfied, at the store, my school boy curiosity about women's garments and not yet convinced of my success as a young executive in the fashion world, I resumed my life among the humble workers and tOOK the next step up the staricase to stardom as a bus boy in a fourth class bar-cafeteria. There I met several of the most distinguished drunkards in town who enriched my English vocabulary with some of the more picturesque slang expressions. Eventually things began to look brighter or at least different. Since I had acquired a fairly good knowledge of the language I began to feel capable of working with people rather than with objects. Before long a great challenge came my way in the fonn of an Assistant Direc­ torship of one of the downtown children's aid society clubs. It was 5 my job to direct the aCtIVItIeS of a number of precocious youngsters of East-Side New York. Skiiled in the art of street fighting and quick with the brass knuckles, these children responded eagerly to my leader­ ship and in no time they were off the streets and engaged in wholesome enterprise.