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| I had gotten out of the Marine Corps and had just left my wife and was traveling across the country with everything I owned in a small UHaul. I had a flat tire on the trailer when I stopped for fuel just across the New Mexico border. I thought, while I waited for the UHaul guy, I should call my parents and let them know what was happening.
I had nothing, so I called collect. My father answers the phone and the operator says to my father who answered, “You have a collect call from Jim.”
My father, in a puzzled voice, says, “ Jim, Jim, Jim?”
The operator asks me, “Caller, what’s your last name?”
I answer, “It’s his son.”
The operator says to my father, “Oh! It’s your son, Jim!”
My father replies, “JIM! Where is he?”
The operator answers, “New Mexico.”
My father says, “ New Mexico! NO!” And hangs up.
The operator apologizes. He sounded really sad. I tell him if he knew my father it wouldn’t surprise him.
Eventually, a very cheerful mechanic shows with his family to change the trailer tire and asks, “How are you?”
I said, “Well, I’ve left my wife, I have nothing to my name, I have a flat tire in the middle of the desert, and my father refused my collect call. I’m basically living a country western song.”
Yeah, my dad saved plastic bags, limited us on everything, charged me for stamps when I was a kid, rent when I started working at 14, stuff like that.
On my mother’s side I’m Scottish and Russian Jew, which you might think would make me the cheapest guy on earth, but I’m not as bad as my dad.
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Any one else’s dad as cheap as mine?
