Add checks to the long list of things gone bye-bye

Buggy whips. VCRs. Cassettes. Fedoras. Hitching posts.

The list of Things That Everyone Used to Use could go on and on and on.

But today let's focus on the venerable check register.

You still have a checking account, right? Then you must know what checks are. Otherwise, you would call it the money-waiting-to-be-spent account.

And a check register is that other bit in your checkbook, the one that isn't actual checks ready to be written.

Remember writing checks? I say this for the younger generation of check writers and newspaper readers. Their demise appears to be about neck and neck at this point.

Consider: A week or so ago the daily newspaper in Carthage, Missouri, ceased to exist.

Boom.

Gone.

Now I discover that many folks younger than my white hair suggests don't know about check registers. Or checks, for that matter.

Instead, they know about ATMs and debit cards. Who needs a check register when all your bills are automatically debited from some banking account?

Don't get me wrong. I think electronic banking (it goes by a lot of names) is the cat's meow. I have to tell you I don't miss having to find that batch of Forever Annoying stamps. Or an envelope.

Maybe you remember the days when bills arrived in the mail with a return, postage-paid envelope just waiting for you to write a check and mail it back.

Boom.

Gone.

If you want to go way, way back -- and if you still have any hair left to turn white -- maybe you also remember that other precursor of debit cards: the counter check.

Remember? When you went to the cashier to pay for your purchases, there would be a stack of counter checks provided by local banking institutions. Sometimes there would be a sign: "No out-of-town checks."

These would be ordinary checks embossed with a bank's name. No account number. No computer codes. Just your signature to represent the trustworthiness of your financial ability to cover said check, no matter how large or how small.

Speaking of small: I remember one occasion, way back, when a friend wanted a pack of gum, which cost about 35 cents in those days. She didn't have any money with her. I didn't have any either. So my friend wrote a check for 35 cents. The cashier didn't bat an eye. Thirty-five cents or thirty-five thousand dollars, the entire personal banking system of our great nation once rested on the trust everyone put in a simple signature.

Those were the days. Where did they go?

Boom.

Gone.

Nowadays, most personal banking transactions rely on auto-pay. I like auto-pay. A lot. I get emails once a month from various creditors -- credit card, utilities, cable TV, cell phone, insurance companies and on and on -- telling me how much I owe and when it will be debited from my money-waiting-to-be-spent bank account. Easy.

I am slowly coming to the realization that I am, quite possibly, the last surviving user of that good, old check register to keep track of the money deposited in my bank account. Every month the bank sends me a statement in the mail. The bank would prefer I switch to paperless notification in order to save a tree or two. Ha! For every tree cut down to make paper, including the paper used to print this newspaper, many more are planted. There are more trees today than ever in North America.

I use the paper bank statement. I balance my checkbook, treating ATM and auto-pay deductions as checks. I work at it until it all comes out to the penny.

Friends look at me and say, "Why? All your up-to-date banking information is right there on your computer."

Maybe. I don't know where my money is. I never see money anymore. When was the last time you paid any attention to money? Cash is on the line of all things doomed. It's like buggy whips and that other stuff I mentioned.

Guess what?

Boom.

Gone.

Just wait and see.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.