Every man, they say, has his price, and I believe I may now have established mine. In fact, I seem to be establishing and reestablishing my price almost daily.
A box seat ticket to a Chicago Cubs game played in midsummer has gone up to $80, and I found myself not ready to pay that sum, drawing another of those wobbly lines in imaginary sand. Last year the same ticket cost $65, which I thought sufficiently outrageous. The $15 jump means that, when I take someone to a game, after adding in parking, a couple of beers, peanuts, and hot dogs, we’re talking about a $200 afternoon. For a baseball game! Something feels wrong about this. I usually buy twelve tickets, two each for six games. This year I have decided to buy just four tickets for two games.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran one of those articles–a less than hardy perennial–on the best hot dog in America. After surveying hot dogs across the country, the author concluded that the best hot dog in the country is available at a stand in a parking lot in Boston. The problem with his selection is that the cost of the hot dog sandwich he chose is $7. A hot dog shouldn’t cost more than $2.50, maybe $3.50 with fries. It’s not the principle of the thing; it’s the price.
A month or so ago, I took my raincoat to the dry cleaner; just the coat, no detachable lining, no extra collars. When I picked it up, the charge was $18. “Eighteen dollars!” I exclaimed. I don’t exclaim often–I prefer my conversation and my prose free of exclamation points–but in this case I genuinely exclaimed. The charge reminded me that, many years ago, my friend the biographer Albert Goldman, shocked at the price he was charged for having a suit cleaned in the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris, exclaimed (knowing Al, I’m sure he didn’t merely expostulate): “What! I asked you to clean the suit, not reweave it!”
I was taken to dinner not long ago at a Park Avenue restaurant called Daniel. My hosts made a point of saying that they understood that I was opposed to expensive wines, which were served with the dinner, and very good they were, too. “Not at all,” I replied. “I am only opposed to paying for expensive wines.” I did not inquire about the price of the wine we were drinking, lest the number sour its subtle taste.
My nearest supermarket is a Whole Foods, into which I pop almost daily, for reasons not of health but of convenience. And almost daily I am rocked by the size of my bill. Four or five items, not much heft in the bag, and my bill comes to some silly sum like $46.20, or $38.76. Incredulous, I check the receipt. Disappointed, I find it is never wrong.
On my local classical music station, I hear a haunting piece of music, “Seven Pastorales” by Lou Harrison, but when I go to buy it, on Amazon.com, I discover it costs $59.95. At that price, I can’t bring myself to add it to my shopping cart. I purchase, with chagrin, a pathetically small chunk of Parmesan cheese for $9.96. A packet of razor blades sells for $11.95. What’s going on here?
I have never considered myself other than generous: a picker-up of more than my share of checks, a handsome tipper, reasonably charitable, a fellow who gives his UPS deliveryman $40 at Christmas. But now I have to consider the possibility that age has rendered me a little near, tight, not to put too fine a point on it, a cheapskate.
Like the man in the old Jewish joke, I may not be comfortable but I make a nice living. So why are all these new prices suddenly getting to me, as they obviously are? Even after factoring in inflation, the problem, I believe, is in the numbers themselves. I remember too many of the old numbers: when a good dinner, a Brooks Brothers shirt, more than a full tank of gas could each be had for less than $10. I could reel off lots of other low prices from the good/bad old days, next to which today’s prices seem staggeringly high, but why bother? The point is that paying more for a small piece of cheese than one formerly did for a well-made shirt leaves a small psychological lump in the throat.
They’ve changed all the numbers on me. Nothing for it but to pay the $2 for the cup of coffee, the $6 for the ballpark beer, the $13 for the greasy-spoon lunch. Live with it, Pops. Of course I can and shall live with it; I only wish I could shut up about it, which I seem unable to do.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN
