Grandma Jo was cheap. We’ve talked about this before. As she neared the end of her life she was very frugal. Miserly past the point of reason.
One day she told me, in a very proud and self congratulatory manner, that she had figured out how to eat lunch very cheap. So cheap she thought, that a prepared meal at home could not be cheaper.
Her new discovery was that she could drive from her home a mile from Shipshewana, Indiana, to the McDonalds in the nearby town of Middlebury. The McDonald’s being about 10 miles away. There she was happy to discover that she could order off “The Dollar Menu”.
The Dollar Menu I’m sure has now disappeared and has been replaced by something that is similarly marketed with a "catchy" phrase and more in line with the inflationary upward spiral in which we find ourselves. But at that time a hamburger could be purchased for a dollar. And a senior coffee for less than a dollar and if you had some French fries you were up to about three dollars with tax. What a deal!
She was so proud of the deal she had discovered. It was like this had never been thought of before and she alone was able to pull this off. It was such a good deal that as soon as the management (in their big tower in Manhattan, New York) McDonald’s figure out that this little old lady in Shipshewana, IN had “pulled a fast one on them” they would surely change things quickly. Heads will roll!
As it was, she had outsmarted them, for sure.
Then I asked her what the gas milage was on her car. She said, oh, maybe… 20 miles to the gallon. I thought that about right.
At the time gasoline was about four dollars a gallon.
So I said, “Well mom it took four dollars worth of gas for you to go buy a three dollar meal. You could have driven a mile away to our little town and had a really nice hamburger meal for seven dollars.
You could see the wheels turning. Her face turned to stone. Wheels turning in stone makes steam and it began to rise from her head.
I don’t remember what she said next but I’m sure it was something like, “Oh David” in a flat tone and then she would shake her head like there was something seriously wrong with my mental state.
And she was right, there was (and is) something seriously wrong with my mental state, but the fact remains, you could have gotten a nice hamburger meal for seven bucks in Shipshewana back then.
We miss Grandma Jo. She was a character.
©David L Arment