Mendel Letters 102 — Frugal
November 5, 2022
Dear Mendel,
Growing up I don’t remember there ever being much money, but I also don’t remember ever feeling that we didn’t have the things we needed or wanted. I think you invented the “staycation,” Sundays riding the Staten Island ferry across New York Harbor, our cruise ship. Looking back, I realize that after Mommy died, a lot of our clothes were hand-me downs and we didn’t have books or magazines in the house. Maybe that’s why I collect books now.
The only time I remember you ever complaining about money was when I was in tenth grade. That year I grew six inches, gained sixty pounds, and ate five meals a day, including two school lunches, and a hefty afternoon snack at a local grocery store. You wanted to know what I was spending so much money on.
My approach to money is one that I learned from you. You were always frugal. Your advice was “learn to live with what you have and you will always be okay.” When my kids accused me of being cheap, my answer to them was always, “I’m not cheap, I’m frugal.” My stepdaughter Heidi once said, “You know you’re not as cheap with your grandkids as you were with us.” But of course, I wasn’t as broke anymore.
I never figured out how you managed retirement living on just social security, but you did, and you were generous to me, your stepfamily, and your grandchildren. After I moved out when I was nineteen I didn’t ask for or want to take money from you. I was on my own. One time there was a family Bar Mitzvah you wanted me to attend and you bought me a suit, a frugal suit, to wear. When I showed up in the suit and wearing a pair of moccasins you wanted to know why I didn’t tell you I didn’t have a regular pair of shoes. I just didn’t. It was 1969 and I thought you were lucky I agreed to wear the suit.
Four times in later years you were generous when I needed it, without being asked. When Judi and I bought our first coop, you came to visit. You liked the neighborhood and the apartment but thought it was too hot and offered to buy us two large air conditioners. Two years later you asked if you could chip in to send Solomon to a performing arts summer sleep away camp. After Judi became sick we had to move from our walk-up to a building with an elevator. This time you offered to help pay for desperately needed replacement windows and two years later when I had to buy a larger car to accommodate a folding wheel chair, you asked if you could contribute.
I guess frugal made it possible for a man who worked hard but never made much money to help others. That was another important lesson that I learned from you. Thanks Dad.
Your son
Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.
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