No contempoary that I know well has a safety deposit box. Is that just another thing wrong with the post-WWII generation? For some reason, my mother seemed to have frequent recourse to hers when I was a kid. I remember going down into the bowels of the bank building, down the marble stairs, accompanied by an armed guard wearing a Sam Browne belt, who unlocked several successive sets of iron gates or grates before ushering us in through the last one, waiting discreetly outside that room for her to finish so he could escort us through tham all again and back to the stairs. I think he even relocked each one as we passed through. The old gas fixtures were still on the walls down there.