When I was a kid, at Christmas my grandmother always gave me and my sisters a silver dollar as a present, the only gift we received from her.

I should have saved them.

But mine were soon spent at the corner bakery or candy store, and the change broken up into mundane nickels and dimes.

I still have a 50-cent piece laying around somewhere, and also a gold dollar coin bearing the image of Sacagawea, the Shoshone who helped guide the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806, while she was still a teenager.

Yeah, money is kind of interesting, although I was never a coin collector or anything like that.

Now. some in our government want to save us money - a good thing, no? - by changing our money.

They hope to do it in two ways:

1) By removing copper and nickel from our coins, because the price of these two metals is rising, and replacing them with less expensive aluminum, zinc and steel.

The last time they fooled around with this was about a half century ago when they took silver out of our dimes and quarters, and reduced the amount of silver in half-dollars.

2) By getting rid of dollar bills and replacing them with dollar coins - cheap ones, of course.

Since dollar bills wear out about every four or five years and need to be replaced, and dollar coins should be good for about 30 years, the estimate is that the change will save taxpayers about $4.4 billion during the life of the dollar coin.

Know how many dollar coins the U.S. Mint has produced in the past 5 years? About 2.4 billion of them, in the presidential series.

Most are languishing in storage, and production was suspended about a year ago, because a lot of people just don't seem to like them.

The people who do like them, and are pushing for change (excuse the pun), are vending machine companies.

To them, machines jammed with crinkly dollar bills mean major repair costs and lost sales.

Other folks who might like dollar coins would be pants manufacturers, who will have to build stronger pockets, as will purse-makers.

Heck, we'll all be jingling - no matter what the season - if this comes to pass.

Quote of the week

"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy." - UnknownThanks for the papers

"We were in Key West for my husband Paul's birthday," writes Donna Hogan of North Attleboro in a note with a copy of the Key West Citizen.

***

"The two Gloucester papers are from a quick trip our family took," writes news editor Larry Kessler of North Attleboro, "to visit friends, rest at our favorite inn overlooking Gloucester's harbor and eat at our favorite Italian restaurant, La Trattoria, with our favorite chicken soup."

What a world

The Independence Examiner in Missouri has reported that an overdue newspaper bill was finally paid. It totalled $56.63, including interest.

Why is this interesting? The guy who owed the bill was Harry S Truman.

The Truman Library and Museum paid the money to George Lund, who was President Truman's paperboy when he was 15 years old. Lund, now 80, is living in a retirement community.

See you next week.

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE is publisher of The Sun Chronicle. Reach him at 508.236.0394 or at [email protected].