Funk talk

We have been in a blue funk recently.

We don't mean one of those little Japanese cars on US I-75, although we did share one recently with five other people and a stick shift. We silently accept this auto infestation as a natural sequence to the Japanese beetle.

No, our special blue funk is a mood of uneasiness, usually caused by what is said in Washington. It isn't what Ronald Reagan says that makes us gloomy. Just the opposite. His remarks give us our only smile of the day. As long as he stands there talking we're all right. And we know all our present problems didn't originate with President Reagan. He hasn't been in office that long.

Most everyone agrees we are better off listening to Ronald Reagan talk than we were listening to Jimmy Carter talk. Even though a lot of people feel that Ronald Reagan doesn't understand what he is saying, Congress seems to understand it. With Jimmy Carter, he knew what he was saying, but nobody else did. Nobody outside of Plains, that is.

Anyway, the things which Ronald Reagan says are not our biggest worry.

It is what Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger says that gives us qualms. Secretary Weinberger has more or less been predicting the end of the world!

Now a lot of cultish people, dressed in long robes, have been predicting the end of the world, off and on, for some time. Occasionally they even walk up to the top of a hill and wait for the sun not to rise. We always had the feeling that they didn't know what they were talking about and that their sources were faulty.

But when the secretary of defense talks about the end of the world, we feel he might have some inside information.

Even though he was just bantering with some Harvard students, who perhaps tend to hasten the end of the world as we know it in their own devious ways, he left us hanging with the statement, ''. . . yes, I believe the world is going to end - by an act of God, I hope - but every day I think that time is running out.''

Maybe we shouldn't take it too seriously. Maybe his thoughts about the end of the world don't have anything to do with his job as secretary of defense. But we can't help wishing that, when he was asked if the world was going to end, he could have said, ''I guarantee it won't be in our lifetime!''

But then, that's Washington for you.