Steve was the cheapest guy I ever met. He grew up in a seemingly normal way, with an ordinary middle-class background. His father was a supervisor at an American corporate mine in Europe. His mother was Norwegian.
Steve’s youth was spent in the company town where his father was employed. The town was Americanized, with its own schools and necessities. Steve had no trace of a foreign accent. He displayed the Norwegian flag on his desk — as a way to subtly highlight his past. Since his mother hailed from Norway, there was no question but that she and her progeny were superior in every way to any American.
Steve eventually married Vicki. She was from an upper-middle-class Texas family — the daughter of a vice president of a large corporation. Even though Vicki had taken a genteel schoolteacher job, she was able to enhance her perceived class by teaching French at an expensive private school.
I met Steve at work. We were both engineers. Working as an engineer in a very highly-paid field, Steve was never hurting for money. But you wouldn’t know this, based on his cheap lifestyle.
Highland Park
Steve and Vicki bought a house in a lousy part of Dallas, one street outside of Highland Park. For the unaware, Highland Park is the Beverly Hills of Dallas. Steve’s cheap house cost 1/5th of the average house in Highland Park. But due to its location, it was half as big and cost twice as much as the newer houses the rest of us bought in the more “normal” upper-middle-class outlying suburbs. Steve and Vicki always gave their address as Highland Park, though they lived a block outside of it. It turned out that proximity to Highland Park was an essential part of their life plan.
Since Steve and Vicki had not quite made it into Highland Park, they soon acquired that necessary transportation element of the la-di-da…a Saab. While the rest of the engineers were tooling around town in their Chevrolet Citations or Ford Fairmonts, Steve and Vicki slowly made the scene in their 1950s-designed under-powered and overweight Swedish yuppie car. It looked a little incongruous parked in the front yard in their run-down neighborhood.
Saturday was trash day in Highland Park. Each Friday evening, after the sun had gone down, Steve and Vicki left their sordid block and skulked the streets of Highland Park with flashlights, searching for valuable cast-offs. They assumed the trash of Highland Park was superior to the trash of other neighborhoods. Steve once bragged to me that he had five vacuum cleaners stored under his house that he had retrieved from the rubbish of Highland Park. Their house was furnished with the moth-eaten discards of their neighbors across the fence. They grasped that anything formerly owned by a resident of Highland Park must be something they should — and would — want.
Babies or Not?
While they were living in their first house, Steve and Vicki were forced to explore the possible necessity of procreation. This happened when they realized they were the last people in their age group to do so. Everyone knows babies are not cheap. Their study method was to invite people with young children over for dinner. This gave them a chance to see the dynamics of family-hood up close. We were invited, with an express invitation to bring our two-year-old child. It was only much later, after we had experienced the full agony of our visit, that we found that other couples with children had also received their own invitations for child inspections.
We arrived with our two-year-old daughter, Laura. The first thing I did was pick up some French glass baubles that were scattered within her reach, moving them to the top of the refrigerator. We were then given a tour of their house, first being invited to inspect their bed. It was home-constructed from an abandoned front door that was missing most of the paint. On the way to the living room, Steve accidentally steered us toward a room that was not on Vicki’s carefully-conceived pre-planned tour. He was sharply corrected by Vicki, who quickly blurted out loud that ‘…this room is not on the schedule!‘ After arriving in the living room, Vicki lazily reclined upon a mid-century crushed velvet chaise. This piece had been elaborately decorated by someone who had been seized with intense Francophilian creativity.
It was hard not to snort, as Vicki, outfitted in a silken flowing robe, appeared to be re-enacting a 1930s movie scene set in one of the opulent penthouses of the Upper East Side. Mrs. Drysdale could not have played a better part. The only thing missing from the scene was Vicki’s cigarette holder. Steve just looked slightly baffled as Act Two began.
After about four seconds of chit-chat, Vicki rose from her settee and glided gracefully across the room. There was a corner table with some objects on top of it, disguised by a small satin tablecloth. Vicki performed an elegant pirouette and stared directly at us. She then delicately grasped the top of the tablecloth between two fingers, and whisked it off. Exactly in the manner of a magician performing a rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick. Under the tablecloth was a gleaming silver tea service. We assumed it was tea time. However, no tea came forth, and Vicki soon floated back to her Old-World Davenport. The silence was profuse as we were left to gaze upon the glory of the tea service for a harrowing twenty seconds.
When the viewing abruptly ended without a word being spoken, we were unceremoniously herded into the kitchen/dining room — right according to the script.
No mention was made as to how Laura would be handled during dinner. It appeared that Steve and Vicki expected her to sit on the floor and entertain herself while we ate. Or perhaps just wander around under the table, like a dog. Being barren, perhaps they honestly did not realize that a child had to eat at regular intervals, too. Or even that it might even be considered rude to eat while a child (or anyone else) was made to look on.
Luckily, we came prepared. We had a small traveling baby chair that clamped onto a table. The chair had very large and soft rubber pads on it, so it would not damage any surface. When Steve spotted me clamping the chair to his junk-pile dining room table, he visibly tightened up. He said he hoped his vintage table would not be damaged. I ignored him, as Laura had been specifically invited to dinner. I could not see how we could continue to have a semi-pleasant forced evening while a two-year-old starved under the table. At any rate, the clamp-on chair was completely harmless. No damage was done to his junk-store furnishings.
Of course, we later extended an invitation to Steve and Vicki to dine at our house. They declined. Vicki would rather have been caught wearing shoes from Walmart than risk being spotted in an ordinary Dallas suburb.
Lunch With The Cheapest Guy I Ever Met
Steve normally ate the most disgusting homemade gruel for lunch at work. I suspected it was made from the garbage they picked up on their nighttime rounds of Highland Park. It consisted of a dark-green viscous mass that looked like it was made of over-boiled spinach or cabbage. There were moldy-looking French bean-like things scattered throughout. It was always packed into an ugly, well-used, and highly scratched mason jar, which had surely been retrieved from the garbage of fancy town long ago.
Even though Steve ate repulsive gruel for lunch, he often asked me if I enjoyed French wine and foie gras. He must have asked me that question twenty times over the years. He also demanded to know if I had eaten escargot. I had, but I pretended I didn’t know what it was. I’m not sure whether he was interested in these things, or if Vicki put him up to it to ascertain the suitability of my social standing. I suspect the latter. At any rate, I didn’t make the grade, and didn’t want to.
I played an enjoyable mind game with him when I told him I subsisted mainly on fried pork rinds and RC Cola. I always played up my ignorance of all ‘high’ culture. He believed me, and never seemed to get that I was putting him on. I got pleasure in knowing he would report all of my lowbrow nature back to Vicki.
Occasionally Vicki would permit him to go out for lunch. Steve always insisted we eat Mexican food if we went out. I believe it was because this was always the cheapest option. I liked Mexican food, but it was tiresome eating it one hundred percent of the time. Steve always ate like he was famished. There was probably not much protein value in his usual lunch gruel since it was always free of the more expensive ingredients — like meat.
Even though they owned the most necessary of Highland Park accouterments, the Saab, Steve was too cheap to purchase a work vehicle of his own. He insisted on driving an extremely beat-up old hideous blue truck that he had driven in college. This was partly a cheap trick he used to avoid driving for a group lunch — as a way to avoid spending money on gas. When the discussion came around as to who was driving, he was always first out with “…well, I only have my truck. I don’t really have enough room to take anyone else.”
He also threw in that his truck had no air conditioning. No one in his right mind would agree to go to lunch in Dallas in August in a vehicle that had no air conditioning. Steve used this knowledge to his advantage. In addition, he probably enjoyed the entire concept of being chauffeured around much more than the average Joe was likely to.
It was very strenuous watching Steve’s epic struggle to extract a dollar tip out of his wallet at the end of the Tex-Mex meal — after he had finished off five baskets of free tortilla chips. I got the feeling Steve’s micro-tip was there only because I was watching.
I was always the one to go along with his restaurant choices, but one day I suggested we just go to McDonald’s. It seemed like an appropriate place for the cheapest guy, and he could avoid the agony of a tip there. I thought these would be desirable points in McDonald’s favor. Steve stuck his nose high in the stratosphere, but we went anyway.
Steve insisted that he had never eaten at a McDonald’s. I found this extremely hard to believe, since Steve had lived in the United States for the past ten years. He had gone to college in Dallas, his family appeared to be average financially, and he had only been married to the scheming parvenu Vicki for a short time. Perhaps Vicki had tipped him off on how to manage this ‘new’ experience.
After the meal was over, I picked up my trash. Steve asked if he needed to throw his own trash into the bin that was ten feet away. You know, the one right by the exit. He inquired in a tone that reminded me of the way Prince Charles might phrase the question. I told him this was the normal procedure at McDonald’s. I wondered how anyone would think it was a good idea to leave a used hamburger wrapper on the table in a fast-food restaurant for the next customer to enjoy. This might be a signal from someone who needed psychotherapy.
Even if it was only me going to lunch with Steve, he always pulled out the limited-room truck ploy as an excuse as to why it would not be a good idea for him to drive. Once, I told him that he could just go ahead and drive. I said I didn’t mind riding in his truck, even if he had no air conditioning. I just wanted to force him to drive for once, and I enjoyed watching him squirm. He was visibly nervous as he pondered the idea of having to spend thirty-five cents on gasoline for the two-mile round trip.
The Rubber Meets The Road
While on the way to the Mexican (naturally) restaurant, it started to rain. Steve did something amazing. He pulled off the street into a parking lot. He then reached under the seat and fumbled around for something. He pulled out a set of rubber windshield wiper blades. I looked though the windshield and saw that the windshield wipers were blade-less! He proceeded to get out of the truck and stand there in the pouring rain installing the windshield-wiper blades! When he got back in the truck, completely soaked, he carefully explained that the rubber on the windshield wipers deteriorated in the sun. So he stored them under the seat to keep them pristine in preparation for the next downpour!
Not being a moron, I was well aware rubber eventually deteriorated in the sun. But even though I was fairly frugal myself, I was willing to accept the brutal inevitability of spending $10 every five years or so to replace my sun-scorched wiper blades. This was the moment I realized Steve was the cheapest guy I ever knew. But I still nodded carefully as he explained his reasoning.
We were taken out a lot by salesmen, which was part of the job that I truly detested. I seldom went along…especially when Steve was picking the restaurant, which he almost always insisted upon. He rejoiced in what he considered to be the ultimate perk — free meals. He demanded that the salesmen take him to the most expensive restaurants in town — like the overpriced revolving eateries that topped the downtown skyscrapers. He didn’t want any Mexican food when someone else was paying! He was a big fan of twenty-four-ounce porterhouse steaks, elaborate seafood towers, and lobster bisque – for lunch. The rest of us preferred deli sandwiches. Steve also needed plenty of French wine to wash down all that escargot. We were embarrassed as the salesmen looked on helplessly, somewhat in awe, as their charge account balances mounted.
Steve Really Was OK – Just Cheap
This is a good time to say that I liked Steve a lot. I thought his eccentricities were fun. I believed his growing tendency toward elitism was the result of years of intense hard-core indoctrination by his wife. He would occasionally slip and admit to something that would never have taken place in Nantucket or Cambridge. Whenever he showed the slightest haughtiness, I played it for all it was worth. I was fascinated that he was not able to tell when I was putting him on. Steve had a single-minded drive to get into Highland Park, and I did admire his persistence in keeping it up. Plus, he was an excellent engineer.
The French Way
Vicki insisted that they visit France every year. There was a pretentious factor built into these vacation plans — as well as an apparent tax dodge since Vicki taught French. No doubt the trips were always written off as business-related.
Steve and Vicki never took clothes to France. They left the USA with a passport and possibly a toothbrush. No deodorant – no need — they were headed to Paris, after all. Upon arriving in Paris, they made a beeline for the nearest Salvation Army used-clothing store. There they could purchase clothing at a great discount which was typical of French fashion from twenty years earlier. I never saw a picture of Steve wearing a beret, though I’m sure he owned one, as it would have given him that “I’ve been here since 1955” look.
You might be starting to realize they were not your typical international travelers. According to Steve, after they got dressed up in their ‘new’ French duds, they headed for the city park. Here they spent most nights sleeping on park benches with the rest of the French bums. Vicki felt this was the only way they could truly experience and learn the bona fide everyday language of the French commoners. Which was very ironic, because Vicki would never want to be a commoner from anywhere. What they were doing was simply an international version of what is commonly referred to as “slumming.”
Steve once described the seminal experience of watching a French park bum defecate on the ground in front of him. He said it helped him understand the “…true nature of the real France.” Vicki had carefully trained him in the superior toilet manners of the French. Therefore, he didn’t see this exterior bowel movement the same way your ordinary unsophisticated ugly-American hillbilly tourist might perceive the age-old French practice of park-crapping.
Upon returning from one trip, Steve proudly showed color slides of France. One picture captured them standing outside some gigantic iron gates. Steve stated that these were the Gates of Versailles, then he went on to the next unrelated picture. Someone in the room called out: “Where are the rest of the pictures of Versailles?” Steve responded that after he and Vicki had made the 15-mile trip from the middle of Paris to Versailles, they discovered the entrance fee was $7.00. They thought this to be too much. So, they continued down the road to view the gates of the next attraction. They are probably the only American tourists (excuse me – travelers) who ever made a special trip to Versailles, then refused to go in.
He sometimes mentioned that he and Vicki were interested in moving to Madagascar. I had to stifle a laugh. Madagascar is one of the most backward and impoverished places in the world. Now, it’s true that Madagascar was once a French colony, so some French is indeed spoken there. I could think of only one possible reason that would explain this strange desire. In Madagascar, he and Vicki would be able to bark out orders in French to their servants in a country where they could reign like monarchs or advanced space-beings. This would have been a situation slightly harder to achieve in the more competitive environs of Paris.
Later, I told Steve I was going to visit England. He gave a mighty sniff. He replied that this might be some decent basic training for an unspecified future time when I might take a “real” trip to “the continent.”
The Cheapest Guy Moves Up
After scrimping and saving for years, Steve and Vicki finally managed to buy a low-end house in Highland Park. After that, Steve became more insufferable. He started to begin and end every sentence with “…since we live in Highland Park…”
Highland Park was so pompous that they had a restriction on parking a pickup truck in your driveway. It was OK to have a pickup truck there during the day, as your plumber or gardener or pool man usually drove one, and they were essential visitors, of course. But after the sun went down, pickup trucks in the driveway were verboten. Steve often humble-bragged that he was forced to move his battered truck into the garage at sundown. This helped him illustrate that he was able to identify with the ordinary troubles of the common man, while showing the travails of living among the La-Dee-Da’s.
Steve had other reasons for holding on to the pickup truck. This was the vehicle he and Vicki used to bring back their booty as they scoured the streets of Highland Park for castoffs on trash night. And it enabled him to be chauffeured to most lunches.
Steve hated cats. He talked about hating cats enough to make me very uncomfortable. I am not necessarily a rabid animal lover, but his conversations about cat-hating (and his specific thoughts about what he would like to do to cats) disturbed me. Long after I lost touch with Steve, I came across a story about his neighborhood in the newspaper. It seemed that someone had started decapitating the well-fed resident cats and stuffing them into the local mailboxes. Of course, Steve did not do this, but the association with all of his previous cat-hate talk was disturbing.
A few years after moving into their Highland Park house, their relatively inexpensive structure (for the neighborhood) mysteriously burned to the ground. Steve and Vicki happened to be conveniently out of the country — on their annual trip to France. This gave them the grand opportunity of a lifetime. They were able to use the insurance money to construct a miniature copy of a French chateau on their newly-cleared lot.
Steve and Vicki had finally arrived.