I have 150 dollar bills I keep in an ancient army-olive newspaper carrier's drawstring bag. I am not a collector. Let's just say I am occasionally lucky at friendly cards.

I also do not subscribe to Armageddon.

I say this because I have a friend who has bricks of dollar bills stashed here and there in every room in his home, usually near a bottle of 18-year-old Macallan, because he believes they both will be useful when world-wide disaster hits.

During this period of reckoning, he tells me, if all you have is a 20-dollar bill, well, that's what a loaf of bread will cost, or a quart of milk, because no one will give you change.

Although he does squirrel away these blocks of bucks, and even irons them so they are smooth and can be bound tightly, he is not crazy, or at least no crazier than most of us.

Heck, it's a harmless hobby.

Well, the other day I was looking at my dollar bills, you know, putting them in packs of 25 bound with homemade paper bands, stapled, since rubber bands would crease the currency, and I was amazed at all the numbers and stuff on them.

What do they all mean, for surely they denote something ...

What most intrigued me were the larger numbers at the right and left on the face of the bills, top and bottom, appearing in each quadrant.

The numbers were either single or double-digit, I discovered.

So I stacked the bills by this number. I had bills with every number but 8, the highest being 12.

What kind of numerological conspiracy was this, I thought, more interesting to me than the eye on the top of the pyramid.

As with most mysteries, it wasn't much.

The number is the Federal Reserve District Number.

It tells you where the dollar bill was printed: a 1 came from Boston, a 12 from San Francisco.

You can also tell where a bill was printed by the letter inside the Federal Reserve seal to the left of Gerorge's head.

It's also the first letter of the serial number. Boston is A, San Francisco is L.

The missing 8s and Hs in my pile? Those bills would have originated in St. Louis.

The odds that I would find no 8 in 150 bills are staggering, and I've been looking for an 8 ever since.

It tells me, I guess, that there is more intercourse between Boston and San Francisco than there is between here and the heart of the country.

Or my end-of-the-world friend, or someone like him, is hoarding all the 8s ...

For the record, here's the Fed code:

A and 1 Boston, B and 2 New York, C and 3 Philadelphia, D and 4 Cleveland, E and 5 Richmond, F and 6 Atlanta, G and 7 Chicago, H and 8 St. Louis, I and 9 Minneapolis, J and 10 Kansas City, K and 11 Dallas and L and 12 San Francisco.

Want to know more? Go to www.onedollarbill.org.

It's time to take heart

Don't look out the window, look at the calendar.

It's only 28 days to St. Patrick's Day

It's only 31 days to the first day of Spring.

And it's only 42 days to the egg hunts of Easter.

Quote of the week

"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day."

Thanks for the papers

Thanks to Bob Hovan and Deb Zamil of North Attleboro for copies of The News Journal from Wilmington, Del.

See you next week.

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE