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Lloyd..Pardon me, but you sound just like my son !
..And I am sure I sound to him, just like your Dad.
Nothing wrong with that, but some things get ingrained into our psyche early in life.
Assumin, I sound much like your dad, let me try to help by way of explanation. Your Dad has about 5 years on me, so in this case it may be more deeply ingrained.
He and I are "children of the depression". The depression brought on a necessity of making everything last as long as possible. Few people today can understand how tough things were at the time!
The crash was 1929..about 2 years before your dad was born. If your family was like mine, they were just average folks, so were hit very hard by the depression. Jobs were almost impossible to find, because those who normally hired help, were almost all broke, themselves.
During the early years of the depression, my dad was fortunate, in that my uncle had a small lumbering business, and he hired my dad. The deal was, dad got a dollar a day and his dinner, but had to furnish his own team of horses. He was grateful for that !
During the depression few people could afford any new clothes, shoes or anything else, so they learned to make do with what they had.
Following the great depression, was the war years (1941-1945). The war brought the country out of the depression, because jobs were available...but almost nothing was being made for the civilian market. Everything from meat, coffee, sugar, shoes, tires, gasoline..all commodities were scarce, and RATIONED !.
During the war there was used a popular slogan, which applied to everything from clothes to shoes to almost any manufactured item. The slogan was this;
"use it up...wear it out..make it do...or do without!" That early training lasts! Although I can remember very little of the depression years, I do recall very well, the WW2 years.
Think of this, when you try to puzzle out your dad's motives..
