On Topic: Being inventive about personal finances

My grandparents didn't fully trust banks. At least, not enough to let such institutions hold all their money.

That would be silly.

So they'd deposit some of it, being good citizens and all, but then casually salt large chunks, W.C. Fields-like, around their home. A Bible might contain a few $100 bills, an old picture frame could hide another couple hundred.

A dresser drawer could store up to $500. The freezer compartment of their refrigerator was a treasure trove.

You'd reach in for some ice for your soft drink and, to your surprise, come out with a wad of bills.

People, it seems, can be mighty inventive about their personal finances - how they keep track of what they have or, as with my grandparents, where they store it.

My first wife, when entering withdrawals in our check register, would approximate. If she made a purchase at a department store for, say, $18.23, she might write $20 in the checkbook.

Sometimes she'd round down - clothing items for $117.87 might be listed as $115. Groceries, I recall, could go either way.

All this made monthly attempts to balance our finances an ordeal akin to being pitched into the Matrix. I never knew what bit of sinister foolishness might await me, hiding behind those narrow-shouldered, innocent-looking columns.

During the long months when I worked at a savings and loan (right after abandoning my graduate school studies of comma faults in “Pudd'nhead Wilson”), I saw at close range the idiosyncrasies of myriad notions of personal finance.

One of my favorite customers was Diamond, who owned a bar that bore his name just a few blocks up the street from the bank.

That is to say, he owned half a bar. His ex-wife long ago had gained ownership of 50 percent of the business in their divorce settlement.

As it turned out, the segment of the property Lily possessed contained their living quarters. So each night, after closing his portion of the bar, Diamond would clear off the pool table, climb up and go to sleep.

Every morning right after the bank opened, he'd blearily weave his way over the short bridge to deposit the lottery money and other receipts he'd collected the night before. On occasion, with a sometimes-lit cigarette dangling from the front of his mouth, he'd confide in us about some brawl that had broken out the night before - other times he wouldn't mutter a word.

But some mornings he just couldn't rouse himself after a particularly rowdy evening, and I'd be sent along to hammer on the front door of his establishment.

And there I'd spy him, sprawled asleep on top of the pool table, sometimes with a cue stick curled gently in his arms ….

I also recall more than a few elderly regulars stopping by the bank, once a month, with their Social Security checks in hand and requesting, very determinedly, to have them cashed - in their entirety. They'd specify they wanted the money all in 10s.

As this occurred in exactly the same steps, each visit, like a well-worn vaudeville routine, I knew where we were headed. And like a good second banana, I resignedly learned to play my part.

I'd cash the checks, counting out the bills on the counter in front of their unflinching stares - usually totaling $2,000 or so.

They'd take the bills and, slowly, pull out $300 and then slide the currency back toward me.

“Put this into my checking account,” they'd say.

They'd watch me, hawklike, as I filled in the deposit ticket, then put the cash back into my drawer.

Next, they'd determinedly count out $1,600 from their stash. That money would be pushed over to me, with the command to deposit this amount into their savings account.

Very early on I'd given up explaining how they really could save themselves - and me - a heck of a lot of time and aggravation if they'd just say when they first showed up they wanted to keep $100 and deposit the rest.

A lot of this behavior, I realize, had to do with growing up during the Great Depression. (And, yes, some of it had to do with downright nuttiness.)

And some of it seems to have something to do with refrigerators, apparently.

During one of our visits to my usually frugal in-laws, who live in the woods in the Deep South, I noticed the light was out in their refrigerator. I asked my mother-in-law if she knew about it.

She allowed that she did - it'd been burned out for weeks.

Why not replace it, I asked. Light bulbs don't cost that much.

The reason wasn't because she was trying to save money, she said. She hadn't put in a new bulb, she replied, because it's

dark in there.