About all I have ever understood about money is, when I'm well off it's all on paper, but when I'm broke, it's cash. And I'm getting to the age where I'm starting to worry that my money won't last as long as I do. 

To try to expand my money savvy, I have been looking into not only dollars but other currencies. For example, I have studied up some on the "euro," that 5-year-old money adopted by a dozen or so European nations. Normally, I don't pay much attention to what goes on in Europe. Most of what I have heard from there since World War II leads me to believe the entire continent may be a couple of clowns short of a circus.

But at first glance, having a uniform currency across the euro-zone seems to be a good idea. I mean, you no longer have to bother with all that different money, most of which resembled toilet paper with murals. Instead of French francs, German marks and Italian lire-all with different values in relation to each other-now you can price everything everywhere in euros.

So why doesn't everybody in the world use the same money? To most of us Americans, the U.S. dollar would be the preferred choice, probably. But maybe we could be persuaded to swap our greenbacks for "globos" or "earthos" or something-as long as the new currency had a bald eagle and a one-eyed pyramid on it.

However, we might want to think it through. We've had all kinds of grief with the Chinese because they try to peg their currency (the yuan or whatever it is) to the dollar, and look where that has put us. We have amassed trillion-dollar trade deficits; more and more of them in our trade with China.

On second thought, maybe having a unified currency all over the place isn't such a great idea. Maybe, instead of unifying money we should think about going the other way. Goodness knows the U.S. has had its own internal monetary miseries. Back in William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" days, hard-currency bankers crucified farmers and other debtors. If farmers and  businessmen had the power to devalue their local currencies, things might have turned out differently; we might not today have a Federal Reserve System, nor a federal income tax.

Same thing with New England textile mill owners, who fled south to avoid paying union wages. That region has never fully recovered. If New England had been allowed to set the value of its regional currency against the national dollar, the entire area might never have fallen on such hard times.

 There's an old credo on currency that says, them as has gets more and them as has not gets got. I doubt if that monetary maxim would change much simply because we changed what we call our money. I'd probably still have the same anxieties about running out of dough before I run out of me.

I once heard Ozark farming described by an 80-year-old neighbor, who said, "I've tried to grow everything on the side of these hills and mis-guessed the climate for 60 years. Now I believe I'm a gonna quit and try something easier, like sortin' bobcats."

Like a lot of my neighbors, he blamed most frustrations on the weather, which in steep mountain country never follows the rules.

Back when I was a radio announcer on a little 250-watt station, my job was to give the weather report early in the morning. People would call in to let me know they held me responsible.

One day a woman called in to say, "You claimed showers, so I scattered my grass seed on the yard. You didn't say nothin' about it comin' a dashin' rain, which piled it all in the lowest fence corner!"

I got in trouble those days because our weather report came from Springfield, which, while technically in the Ozarks, is a plateau compared to the rugged ridges of the springs country to the east.

The men seldom complained. Most farmers in that time before television, tuned to C.C. Williford, Springfield's revered weatherman, knowing I got my morning report from the same place. But their wives were loyal to our hometown station, which featured homey programs like "Swap Shop" and took my forecasts as personally as a recipe. They felt obliged to call me when I had failed them.

My most amazing criticism, however, came by mail. Earnestly penciled in capital letters by a farm wife from Gladden Valley, it said:

Dear Mr. Jayne,

I don't like to complain because Lord knows none of us is perfect, but I have been a radio listener to your station for 4 years, and you give out the sorriest weather I have ever heard. My son can read weather signs better than any of you, and he is 10 years old. He knows rain crows, tree toads and what all other varmints do that calls for rain. He knows if a snow will stick or go off and foretell a frost, a fog or snow a making because he knows to look for signs before he opens his mouth. I don't think it is right for you to lie about weather, as many folks depends on what you tell them to get stock in or work in the hay. Not telling you what to do, but if you need guidance, in telling about weather to farm people, you might try praying, which is a help to us all.

I showed this letter to the old neighbor, who planned to take up sorting bobcats.

"PRAYING?" he said, bug-eyed, "Why son, if praying worked I'd have sold this farm 50 years ago!"