MISQUAH — The first thing Yvette Boone learned about Misquah is that the bank is not primarily a bank. It is a place where people come to conduct business that occasionally involves money — a distinction her predecessor, Howard Lindgren, spent thirty-one years mastering and about forty seconds explaining to her before he retired.

“He told me: the transaction takes four minutes and the visit takes twenty, and if you try to fix that you’ll be the third-fastest bank in a county with two,” she said. “I thought he was being folksy. He was being operational.”

Boone, 48, came from Edina a year ago this summer, and by her own account spent the first three months being politely evaluated. She has since learned the seven lakes in order of depth (a test she was given at the counter, unprompted, by a customer she declines to name), stopped scheduling anything for the Fishing Opener after doing so exactly once, and adopted the local practice of conducting serious conversations while both parties look at something else. “Nobody here will discuss a loan while facing you,” she said. “We look at the truck, or the lake, or the form. I find I prefer it.”

The professional picture is steadier than the personal adjustment. Deposits are up modestly, the ag side is quiet, and the two loans everyone asks her about — the brewery and, prospectively, the Hagen lots — she will not discuss individually, which is both policy and, she notes, the fastest way to end a conversation she wants to have about anything else. On growth in general she offers what she calls the newcomer’s dilemma: “I’m evidence that people move here. It would be strange for me to have a strong opinion about people moving here.”

What she does have opinions about: the covered sign (“whoever advised them to leave it up did the whole town a favor”), the honor box on County 12 (“in thirty years in banking I have never seen a lower-cost trust mechanism”), and the fortieth-anniversary crowd at the hardware store, which she attended card in hand and has thought about since. “That’s the local math,” she said. “Forty years times most days open times two hundred fourteen cards. You can’t put it on a statement. It’s still the biggest number in town.”