In this episode, our Backwoods Guru, Bill Smooshfoot, is "Just Reflectin'" on monetary systems, hickory logs, and robust doll-makers. What exactly does "dollar" mean, anyway? And why do we use something when we don't even know what it is? Back to barter says Bill. DadLabs Ep 407.

Bill: Recent stocking market isolations, gyrations and other manifestations have me – Bill Smooshfoot just reflecting.

When you think about money in the historical sense – it has a calming effect on one’s nerves. I have been thinking a lot about monetary systems lately – the strange nature of it. I think about the actual thing itself, the money - the dollar. What does dollar mean? Do you know?

It made me think of the Roman soldiers – of course the Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which led of course to the phrase – worth your salt probably. Well they didn’t fight very well in the rain – salt seems to me to be an odd way to pay a man, but there they would go – those legions, shoulder to shoulder and it doesn’t make a bit of sense! They would overtake the known world for seasonings – I don’t understand it.

How on earth, did our most fundamental transaction – between one and other as human beings, somehow become abstracted? Wouldn’t it be nice to go into a sandwich shop and be able to give to that man – a fine length of hickory wood? That’s what a salami man wants – something for his fireplace. So that he and the wife – perhaps 3 small children like I never had. How did we get on that s***? How am I supposed to just be reflecting?

Of course you’ve heard me talk many times about the native-American cultures and of course the beautiful system of wampum that they had – what could be more elegant? Gathering by the seaside – beautiful shells colored purple by the incoming waves. Myself – of course, I’ve never actually seen the ocean. My second wife was from a shore town and therefore I hate the ocean.

There is somebody here that’s in charge and keeping me on the script and when I get off the script, somebody’s got to say Bill – you’re talking about your divorce again damn it. I sometimes think that that first man – coin maker, who from the rough materials he mined from the earth created the first coin.

Who knows what inspired that first coin maker? But I’d love to get a hold of that son of a b****! If I walked into a shop, see a fine, older perhaps middle-aged woman – busty, who had in her own life – fashioned certain dolls from available natural materials. You find her – beautiful, and you’re going to hand her something abstract – something that is not from you, what kind of culture is that?

Wouldn’t it make better sense – to draw from your pocket, something enormously personal? Why are the interns laughing? Something that you had made yourself - to barter with this robust woman. Perhaps you could give her a large hickory log. These are the kind of personal economies that we have to find. We need to get away from these abstract concepts.

Imagine a more personal transaction. One in which – as the sun goes down, you emerge from your domicile and walk down the humble sidewalk to your neighbor. You smell coming from the house – beautiful cooking aromas, but she’s fashioning her famous homemade tortillas. You knock on the door, she answers – that robust middle-aged woman, and you accept her warm tortillas. In exchange you give her a humbly fashioned pillow – these are the kind of smaller transactions that can still save this country. As you go about your busy day in this grand and great materialistic society, take a little time to make something and to trade it with someone else.

I’m Bill Smooshfoot and I’m just reflecting.