Today was about money, at least as I experienced it.

First of all, I paid the bookstore’s taxes. Deadline is Feb. 5, but I dread the experience so much I figured I’d just go ahead and file. One more week won’t make a lot of difference. Since most of our sales volume is textbooks for our school, exempt from sales tax in this state, we don’t really have to cough up a whole lot. It hardly seems worth the trouble. Not that I have any plans to skip it some year and see whether anybody notices.

I recall an old episode of “Death Valley Days” (why am I thinking about old TV westerns this week?). I think it was in the Ronald Reagan years or later (although for me “The Old Ranger” [Stanley Andrews] was always the proper host. When they replaced him with Ronald Reagan, I just assumed he’d died, but according to Wikipedia they simply fired him on account of his age. I guess nobody’d ever noticed before that The Old Ranger was… you know, old. So they brought in Reagan, who [this may surprise younger readers] was not always ancient. Then came Robert Taylor and Dale Robertson).

Where was I? Oh yes, anyway, I was deeply impressed by one particular episode. It was about this old guy—a miner or something—who travels a very long journey in a buckboard alone (except in the sense that a horse is company) across the desert, facing and enduring bad weather, Indian attacks and outlaw attacks. When he finally overcomes all the obstacles and makes it to the town he’s headed for, he explains that he’s come to pay his taxes. “I always pay my obligations,” he says. Or words to that effect.

I thought that was great. Even in those days, the cool slacker was becoming fashionable in America, but I was deeply impressed by “squares” like that. That was the kind of guy I wanted to grow up to be.

I didn’t succeed, but I offer the intention, for the record.

After work I ran by Office Depot to pick up a sign I’d ordered for the Archive. We will now have a plaque on the door saying, “Georg Sverdrup Archive.” I was afraid someone would have conscientiously corrected my spelling on “Georg,” but they apparently trusted my cautionary notation. (“George” is spelled “Georg” in Norway. And in other places, which I’m too lazy to look up.)

Anyway, I examined the merchandise, wrote a company check, and headed home. When I was getting out of the car I noticed that my check was stapled to the receipt.

So I drove back, planning out a gentle way to inform the clerk of her mistake.

And that’s when I learned about “electronic checks.”

I’d seen them on bank statements before, but I’d never had an actual, physical check handled that way before.

I think I should start calling myself The Old Ranger.