phone calls from Ethiopia

Bill collectors are getting slick. In-stead of using the give-a-way 800 or 866 number.... they call from area code numbers. And still somehow, from India... Somali or Ethiopia. I guess. Why not China? anyway, I made the mistake of answering this after noon. The inevitable accent, and the embarrassment of saying my name... I asked if he was calling from Ethiopia. He ignored that wanted to find out if I was me. "What is your name, Sir".... I told him it was Space Cowboy. He pressed again, and I said I was the gangster of love.... He asked if he could speak to Preston Faggart, and I decided he could not... Sorry.

I get these calls a lot.Because I owe some money for credit card debt. Credit cards are the pits.... have always been, especially for one so unstable as I am. Brings back memories of my first credit card. I got it unsolicited in NYC in probably 1966. I had lived in New York just a short time, and had my first real job up there, temporary, but fairly lucrative with over-time galore. American Photo is responsible for Santa Lands that are set up at Christmas in big department stores around the country.

My account with Chase never had a whole lot of money in it, but when they started the first credit card operation I ever knew anything about.... I received the card in the mail, with the instructions I could use it anywhere the "Everything Card" was visible.

I got the card, quite intrigued. I started using it. I do not think I had a balance of more than 4 or 5 hundred bucks. I paid it off for a while, than I ran out of money. There was a time in there when my income froze, and I let that slide. I remember getting a call from some lady at the bank, want some payment or other! I explained to her I was now a pauper, (used that silly term), and could not pay now. She took exception to my word use, and I told her the bank was crazy sending out plastic like that to the slums where I lived in a 40 dollar a month walk up, 5 blocks from Spanish Harlem!!! I think I got a few more attempts for collection.

This was 1965. A little Wikki research shows that this sort of thing started in San Francisco in 1958, when Bank of America sent out some charge cards:

"In mid-September 1958, Bank of America launched its pioneering BankAmericard credit card program in Fresno, California with an initial mailing of 60,000 unsolicited credit cards.[7] The original idea was the brainchild of BofA's in-house product development think tank, the Customer Services Research Group, and its leader, Joseph P. Williams, who convinced senior BofA executives in 1956 to let him pursue what became the world's first successful credit card "drop," or mass mailing of unsolicited credit cards (that is, actual working cards, not mere applications) to a large population.[8]"


It was quite a few years before I bothered with a credit card again. My Grandfather never bought anything he did not have the cash on hand to cover. I always thought that was admirable. I tried to do likewise. However, I did finance a car finally, in 1982, and got my first American Express card then, as I was making good money at the time, and still living like a starving artist in the cheapest dump I could find. American Express was fine, because you had to pay up every month... no interest to accumulate.... just pay them a reasonable 50 bucks a year (back then) for the privilege. My first Visa, I got when offered by a green company, whose profits went to good causes like the environment. A major growing concern. My wealth creating greed. What else is new? So, I kept my job at the Nuke plant and joined the Sierra Club.... not telling either party of the other affiliation. Ha.

I kept the two cards, and kept a low balance on the visa. But in the 90's back in Texas a traumatic time, the death of my father, and my mother's need to go into a care center, I found I had no good source of income, a recession had cut jobs, and unemployment was rampant, like now. My resources stretched, I was still receiving cards in the mail from all over. I had great credit, but no income.... and my judgement became very impaired. I gave a credit card or two to a couple of young friends.... stupid, but I was mad at the system, and decided to burn it.... immoral capitalism. They will get theirs!!! Fuck em!!!!

My ideals slipped out of hand, got me in trouble... I think I even told one of these guys to go out and ruin my credit. He did. In a few years, I needed to buy a car.... and after a horrible tote-the-note deal with a wrecked Nisson, which ended up being repo-ed in the middle of the night from my yard, they got a lousy deal, it was full of garbage and hail damaged etc!! My only re-po.... But as luck would have it, I got an offer from a bank that was taking high-risk loans, with high risk interests!, I got my hatchback Honda, which I still drive.

My last two credit cards, when they turned the interest up to 25 percent on one and 21 percent on the other, I dropped and am paying off as best I can....