Thrift is considered by most a positive attribute. “Cheap” on the other hand has negative connotations. I’m proud to say I’m a little of both. I still wear tee shirts that are 20 years old. Not just because I like them (some have nostalgic logos for me) but because they’re still good! If there’s a little hole that somebody might notice, I’ll wear the tee shirt as an undershirt or under a coat in the fall. My wife is amazed when she reconciles our credit card each month because all of my charges are for food or fuel. That’s it. “What more do you need?”, I say. When I need something, I just go out and buy it (looking for the best deal, of course), but I don’t spend any time at all looking through advertisements about what I MIGHT like to buy that the seller happens to have a “good deal” on, or a coupon for, etc.
So that brings me to the “How cheap can YOU be?” story. I’m sure many of you have one, here’s mine. It concerns a certain Winner brand of athletic shoe that was made, about forty years ago. I forget what company made it, but I probably bought the shoe at Walmart or K-Mart. I wore that shoe for such a long time and I thought it was a pretty good shoe, to be honest. Maybe it happened to fit my foot just right or maybe I was just lucky. Anyway I wore that shoe until it was just about gone. The sole started to wear out near the ball of the foot on one shoe, but I didn’t think much of it at first because they still felt comfortable and it didn’t matter. The shoes didn’t actually leak because the weather was dry where I lived.
My older brother John, I have to say, was one of the best informed consumers that I have ever seen. He really researched every purchase carefully to make sure he got his money’s worth. He was a big fan of Consumer Reports Magazine, and he disdained product reviews from magazines that gave awards to companies that just happen to also be a big part of their advertising base.
John also liked to give a good natured ribbing where it was due and when he noticed that his brother, the doctor, was wearing some rather beaten up looking sneakers, he just couldn’t resist the opportunity to give me some grief. He looked up the Winner shoe on Consumer Reports and discovered that they had given it one of their most exclusive recommendations: “UNACCEPTABLE”. I got no end of grief about it, but it became a point of honor for me to defend that shoe. I wore it every time I saw my brother. I had to make some minor alterations to maintain the shoe’s integrity, like putting cardboard in the hole at the bottom. When my socks started getting holes in them, I got some screen door netting and made a sandwich to keep the cardboard from wearing out at the hole in the shoe. Eventually there were holes in both shoes but I kept those much maligned shoes going and going and going. I might get kidded with “Unacceptable!”, but then I’d reply “How long have YOUR top rated shoes lasted?”.
Eventually I realized that the game was up and I just couldn’t keep those shoes going any longer. I had to get new shoes or my feet were going to be completely eroded by asphalt paving at a very young age. By this time, my brother’s son Furman had gotten in on the game and enjoyed teasing his uncle Bert just as much as his dad did. We had a family trip planned to Vail over the holiday season, so I wrapped up the ancient sneakers and presented them as a gag Christmas gift to Furman. We all got a big laugh when that gift, with the fervent anticipation of a ten year old, was finally opened.
I took my own kids to Boston one summer several years ago and we stayed with Furman and his wife, who lived there at the time. Furman had a few days off, so he had time to show us around the city. We set forth from his apartment in Cambridge the first day, bound for the Freedom Trail, a famous historical walking tour of Boston. Furman looked over and asked me what kind of shoes I was wearing. I told him quite frankly that they were Reeboks that I bought fifteen years ago. He said they looked nice, so I explained that they actually didn’t have fifteen years of wear on them because I wisely bought two pairs at the same time. After the first pair wore out, I could’t find the second pair for a while because we had remodeled, but I had probably been wearing this pair for a couple of years or so.
I didn’t think much about Furman’s query (thinking that Furman was interested in my footwear simply because we had so much walking ahead of us that day). I had forgotten about the gag Christmas gift at Vail almost twenty years before. Then Furman said’ “You know, I still have that pair of Winner shoes you gave me. I’ve moved a few times but I never had the heart to just throw them away. I checked into bronzing them so I could give them back to you, but it was too expensive.”
I have to say I was thunderstruck. That such an eccentric act by a questionably sane uncle could have this effect on my nephew really touched me. Some day I’ll probably get those shoes back. If I’m so short of funds at the time due to my premature retirement, maybe I’ll wear them. Another plan was to give them a proper burial at the famous shoe tree on route 50 in the Nevada desert. Unfortunately some nut chopped the tree down a few years ago. The only tree for miles around and now it’s gone. I hear the tree has been replaced because of its popularity but either way, my old Winner shoes deserve a proper burial. They’ve taught more than one generation about the value of thrift.
