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It's lucky for the two distinguished men in dark, expensive wool suits that the supermarket isn't too crowded this morning. They fly up and down the aisles with their shopping carts, their long tailored overcoats and winter scarves flapping out behind them, shouting to each other as they pass; clearly, they are having a great time.

"This is a soup and tuna fish run," calls out dark-haired, stocky George S Haynes. "I've cleaned out every can at 50 cents a can. It's not the albacore white, it's the chunky light, but it's 50 cents a can."

As Haynes races off to a raimen noodle sale, the store clerk smiles and asks a passerby, "Did you ever expect to get a shopping lesson from a banker?"

Haynes, 59, is president and CEO of the Brattleboro Savings and Loan Association FA. This particular morning, a few weeks before Christmas, Haynes and Larry Smith, community relations director for Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, are trying as hard as they can to spend $1,000 in an hour; ultimately, they will succeed in spending $998.

This is the first shopping spree of many for the pair, who run Project Feed the Thousands, Brattleboro's Christmas food drive. More important, the morning is a typical example of how Haynes defines his role as small-town banker: to have fun while doing good.

Shortly after he came to BSL in 1992, Haynes told Smith he wanted to do something for the community.

"Then in June of 1993, I got a call from the Drop In Center," Smith said. "I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a place where people who live under the bridges get food. But the center invited me down, and I saw a line all the way out the door. And they were people I knew! They were moms, elderly people, teenagers. 'Oh my God,' I thought. 'People I know are hungry!' I put George in the car and drove him down there. He couldn't believe his eyes. There was nothing on the shelves." Project Feed the Thousands was born.

"For me, that was showing the very human side of George, a guy who is always bubbly and a prankster," Smith said. "For both of us, it's very serious that there's hunger. We're driven to do this project. We run our tails off There's no woman in the state that can out-shop George and I."

The goal was to fill 10 tractor trailer trucks with non-perishable food and feed 4,000 hungry people in Brattleboro and 38 surrounding communities. To accomplish it, Smith and Haynes had to get the entire community involved.

C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc donated three tractor-trailer loads of food. Boy Scouts and school children collected money Drop-off bins strategically placed in supermarkets collected additional food. In the supermarket, a woman handed Haynes a $100 check, "Because I know what you're doing here."

"Community do-gooder" is not usually part of the job description for a bank president, but you can hardly open the Brattleboro Reformer these days without seeing Hayne's smiling face.

He is everywhere. He is shopping for food for Project Feed the Thousands; he is handing out monthly Community People Awards; he is feeding hamburgers, hot dogs and sodas to 2,000 passersby on Main Street on the bank's annual Community Appreciation Day ("Most banks have a customer appreciation day; we have a community appreciation day"); he is the campaign chairman of this year's United Way Fund Drive; he is promising to tithe 10 percent of the bank's yearly earnings to charity; he is working on the hospital fund drive; he is talking to school groups about what it is like being president of a bank; he built a room in the new BSL building specifically so nonprofit organizations will have a place to meet; he is partnering with the Brattleboro Union High School Career Center, where BSL has a student-staffed branch office.

Haynes is so committed to community relations that he deliberately placed his ground-floor office at the front of BSL's Main Street building. He can sit in his maroon leather chair and watch people reading in the library across the street; he can watch the cars and pedestrians; he can see and greet everyone who comes into the bank.

Haynes may be genuinely gregarious, but he is also, as Smith describes him, very aggressive, very focused and very driven." The first word everyone who talks about him uses is "competitive."

Community involvement, it turns out, is part of a long-term marketing strategy to convince everyone in Windham County that banking at BSL is the right thing to do. In fact, the bank's motto, taken from a Quaker Oats commercial, is "For all the right reasons."

"George has no tolerance for people banking elsewhere," said Mary Boulay, BSL's senior vice president and its senior retail banking officer. "His goal is a 50 percent market share. No excuse is good enough for why you don't bank with Brattleboro Savings & Loan."

Haynes' strategy seems to be working. Since he came to BSL 10 years ago, the bank has almost quadrupled in size.

"When I came, the size of the bank was almost $35 million," Haynes said. "And we also had about $13 million in sold fixed-rate mortgages, which is what most banks do with their fixed rate mortgages - they sell them. Today, we're about $130 million in assets and we have about S85 million-to-$90 million in sold loans."

Haynes frequently describes his successful banking career as a matter of "right place right time." But his business success has not been mirrored by success in his personal life; he has been married and divorced three times.

"I have two grown children, and a son who's nine and a daughter who's 13," Haynes said. "I see both of the younger children every week, and my son spends 50 percent of his time with me. Tonight we're going to the Cub Scouts. But obviously, my personal life hasn't been as successful as my business life. Over the past several years, however, it seems to be the balance in my life - devoting time to the bank, time to the community, and time to the two children. That seems to work well with me."

Right now Brattleboro is experiencing an economic downturn. In the past two years, several large companies have closed or moved and more than 300 workers have lost their jobs. In the coming year, more of the town's large employers will be leaving, and another 250 or 300 employees will face an uncertain future. Many of these dislocated workers are customers of BSL. What happens to Haynes' friendly, good-guy image when his customers can no longer repay their loans is an interesting question.

Brattleboro Savings & Loan

BSL is one of 20 community banks in Vermont.

"The Federal Reserve Board thinks a community bank is a billion or less and a regional bank is a billion or more," said Thomas J Candon, deputy commissioner of banking for the Vermont Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration.

BSL, however, is the only remaining savings and loan in the state.

"Once we had about nine or 10 of them," Candon said. "Then Vermont Federal Savings and Loan in Burlington merged with Middlebury, Randolph and a few others changed their name to Vermont Federal Bank. Brattleboro, Springfield and Bennington remained. Then Springfield merged into Brattleboro. Bennington stayed on its own, and then a couple of years ago converted to a federal savings bank."

In the past, savings and loans were usually thought of as residential mortgage lenders (think of Jimmy Stewart in "It's A Wonderful Life"). But today there is almost no difference between a savings and loan and a bank, Candon said.

"In the 1980s, when those terrible banking scandals happened, the federal regulators started allowing savings and loans to call themselves banks," Candon said. "I can't tell you the difference today between a savings and loan and a savings bank. There may be little or no difference. Savings and loans are becoming business lenders, and those who want to get into business lending want to shed the image of a savings and loan."

BSL was founded in the Brattleboro Town Clerk's office in 1912 as a savings bank for working people. It is depositorowned. For each $100 on deposit depositors receive one vote, up to a maximum of 100 votes. People with loans do not vote. The depositor-owners elect a board of directors.

"We were always a community bank," said retired Brattleboro businessman W Robert Johnson, who has been on the bank's board for 32 years. "That's how you get on the board - if you're the president of the Chamber, or you work on the Winter Carnival, or you're involved in the community in some way."

BSL is determined to remain a small-town, community bank, Haynes said. In an age of mergers and acquisitions, it proudly announces it is "Not For Sale."

"That's because we're not a stockowned bank," Haynes said. "It's not like somebody can come in and tender an offer and we can be bought. With stock banks, it's continued expansion and setting oneself up to be purchased. So in an environment like Vermont, where community is important, people are known by name, and we're able to do business, a lot of times, face to face. It sets us apart to be mutually owned."