Very good story, Don, and very accurate depiction of a barter economy conducted between people who are neighbors and consume directly what they obtained by swapping.
My own hammock was made in the Yucatan by Mayan Indians who don't eat ham sandwiches and don't drink coffee. And my car runs on gas which comes from the Middle East, where they do drink coffee, but will have the urge to kill you if you try to feed them a ham sandwich.
Thus, when human civilizations began to trade across great distances, they found it useful to introduce coins as mediums of exchange when buying from people who didn't want what they happened to be carrying in their backpack or in their caravan. Within their own villages, people continued to use barter, and something closely resembling barter - promising to repay a favor now with a favor later. If one peasant needed help putting on his roof, the others would help, with the understanding that the value they provided would be repaid on a later date with something of equal value. Throughout much of the world, for most of man's existence, money was not used because it was not needed.
But for certain classes and certain occupations, money was essential because the people with whom one dealt were strangers, who could not be trusted to keep a promise, or were from far away, and would not be able to repay a favor when it was needed.
It is said that the Lydians invented coins, and hypothesized that the reason was not to facilitate trade, but to pay mercenary armies to fight against the Persians.
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