The Frugal Traveller

My dad told many jokes that were double entendres. He was like a taller version of Rodney Dangerfield, although not as self-deprecating, and he did not insult others.

He told his jokes in front of me, his only child, born when he was 43 years old. I didn’t get them at first, but as I grew older and remembered them, I would understand and burst out laughing. He died at age 59, when I was just 16 years old.

Here is one joke I heard him tell when I was very young:

Everyone knows the word, “frugal.” “Frugal” means “to save.” A beautiful princess was lost in the woods and she thought she would die. Suddenly, a prince on a white horse came riding through the trees. “Oh, sweet prince,” she called to him. “Frugal me!” So he “frugaled” her, and they lived happily ever after.

A few years later, I was in 6th grade. I was young for the grade since I had skipped 4th grade, and generally quite naïve as an only child. My teacher had the class read and memorize a famous poem about books. Here is how it went:

There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away.
Nor any courser like a page of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take, without oppressive toll.
How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul.

The teacher, a silver-haired spinster, asked if anyone knew what “frugal” meant. I raised my hand and told my father’s “story.” My recitation was met with silence.

Later that week, I was riding in the car with my dad driving. I proudly told my parents that I knew something no one else knew in my class, because of my dad’s story. “What story was that?” he asked. I told the whole thing, poem and frugal story and all, and when my dad heard it, he started laughing in a way I had never heard before, a huge, booming “Ho, ho, ho.” The car swerved around the road while he laughed and laughed, and I knew there was something more to the story than I originally thought.

— Suzanne Leichtling,
daughter of Joseph Fischer
New York, NY