I got to thinking about a memory I have from about 10 or so years ago that I thought I'd share, I think r/Frugal will appreciate it.
Growing up, I lived in a relatively small farming community in central California, the weather was almost always very mild and warm. Everything was pretty dry for most of the time, and the sun was out every bit of 8 months of the year. One weekend I was with a few of my friends working on a project that needed some scrap wood pieces, like from pallets or what not, and we were gathering it from the yard behind a door and cabinet shop that was owned by a friend from church.
His place was located in a long building with a chain of small businesses, most focusing on some kind of manufacturing or repair , and next door was a small engines shop. While we were searching outside in the yard which was just a big open space that all the businesses in that building complex shared, the owner of the small engines shop was outside as well. He noticed us rummaging around as I'm sure a bunch of kids was somewhat unusual to see out there in this environment. Anyway he got to talking with the owner of the door shop that we knew about what was going on.
In the course of being out there, I had noticed this odd looking motorcycle/trike thing that was unlike anything I had seen before. Imagine a motorcycle in the front, but instead of a normal back end seat and tire, this has been welded to a tool box for a seat and a rather large trailer for a back end, which also made up the tricycle aspect of it. The thing was ugly, rusty in some spots, obviously hodge-podged together from spare parts that were around in the yard, and was likely featured in any number of scenes in the Mad Max movies. And like the creation, the creator which I took to be the small engine shop owner who was standing outside, this man was an older guy, ugly in the eyes of those who might be concerned with things that are flashy and new.
The things that stood out to me about this guy was that he was rather old (to me at the time anyway), he had on black skinny jeans that were way too small for him, he was wearing a black tattered tee-shirt that was probably his favorite shirt to work in as it was greasy and had seen its share of burn holes from stray welding sparks, and he had a look on his face like he knew what he was doing as he milled around in his part of the yard.
Anyway, this guy noticed me and my friends somewhat marveling from at distance at the motorcycle trike sitting near the front of his shop, and he looked over at us and said, "Yeah, I built that thing myself." We expressed our amazement and shared that we were impressed. I don't remember all of what he went on to say, but I do remember came back to the motorcycle trike at one point and was talking about it in relation to some of the SUVs he'd seen on the roads, in how big they were and flashy.
That's when he said something that has stuck with me ever since and at that moment, completely changed how I viewed the world and set me on my path to Frugality.
As he described those big SUVs, he commented on their costs. He said, "You could pay anywhere up to $40,000 for one of those cars," going on to say "and I built this myself, and it takes me everywhere I need to go and does everything I need it to do. It only cost me about 1200 bucks!" Then he kinda slowed his speech in a way to make things more serious, in that somehow the difference in price and the value of what was being bought or owned in that sense was an injustice in someway. He said, "And people call ME crazy."
"And people call ME crazy."
Changed my outlook forever. Anyway, just a story from my youth that I thought you'd all enjoy! Thanks for reading!
TL;DR - Crazy old guy at small engine's shop built his own ride for $1,200. Told me people call him crazy for doing that while they go and spend $40,000 for their vehicle.
March 20, 2017 at 11:25AM
