I am a die hard New Englander and we love the art of haggling up here...[P
My Grandpa was a South Omaha (nebraska) Lithuanian-Pole and would never give a man his price and he's make him work for it if the guy stood on his price.
They nicknamed him Pinky since he was a kid.
Grandpa always said he seldom started a fight but wouldn't stand to go home known as a chicken. He said if he lost a fight he'd go back to the fella for more. He didn't consider it starting a fight just finishing one up.
He used to say if you took a gal out dancing from the other neighborhoods there wasn't any trouble picking her up but sometimes there was someone waiting for you when you took her home.
He said people he grew up with didn't shoot and stab each other like dirty animals.
His brother's and friends all served in WWI and WWII, he was too young and too old for either and never was drafted.
His dad was spit on and called DP
They never took a dime they didn't earn
Grandpa Pinky's dad had been a stationmaster on the Czar's railroad in lithuania.
He was also a master carpenter who made his tools from scratch (you couldn't just go buy them) and was a coachbuilder for Union Pacific here in Omaha.
He made it to America.
The rest of his father's family (except for one uncle who got rich running a junkyard out of unused airplane hangers in Chicago) were taken to slave farms in White Russia after the revolution.
He was the youngest and his older brothers were drunks. Pinky left school at 16 when his dad died from TB to support the family.
He rode the rails and worked the docks.
He'd say in a war anything goes but otherwise you didn't hit a man or kick him when he's down and if you broke them rules you had it coming to you from your own when you got home.
He said the only time he really went out to get in a fight on purpose was when he'd wear an orange tie out to the bar on St. Patrick's day.
At his funeral the cars line up for a mile...He never was well-off but he knew alot of people...
many old timers came up to us and told us boys "Your grandpa was one of the most decent and the toughest men in South Omaha don't you forget it!"
The man about half raised me, I spent my summers with him growing up and his family was all he was about.
I don't know if I could walk a mile in the man's shoes. But if I had to... he's in me and I know he wouldn't let me down
My brothers and I all love to haggle, we picked it up from Granpa Pinky
My brother Greg calls it "Pinkenomics"