Isn’t it funny? That’s how much they used to charge. Now, it’s as much as we can afford to pay.
I can remember my old man bitching about those outrageous prices...
Wow! That was sure as hell printed before my time.
It must have been a different world back when a man go to work while his wife could stay home and raise the children, while the family got along just fine financially....
A super jumbo banana split sounds really good about now. I always love seeing the old stuff like menus and ads and catalogs. I have a 1961 Life magazine that I recently showed the kids.
I find the 10c coke and the 30c Ham Salad Sandwich a little pricy.
http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2//viewtopic.php?p=1210578#1210578
“Raising free-range kids”
When I was six, my Dad built a boat for me— 10 feet long, 4 feet in beam. You’d call it rowboat, but we called it a “bat-tow” ( darned if I can spell it correctly, or even locate the proper spelling ) with oarlocks and a bench midships. The transom was reinforced for an outboard motor, but I wasn’t entrusted with one of those ‘till a few years later.
I would collect soft drink bottles on the beach, and when I had 25 of them, load the boat and row to the pier in the Village. Yes, we are talking about being at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean.
Climb a vertical wood ladder- no guard cage, no rails, no nothin’ for safety- about a twenty-foot climb— and haul my booty to the deck. The tourists were always impressed by the little white-haired, nut-brown ( yes, my black friends often told me I “passed,” I was so dark... ) beach boy.
From there to the Community Market, to redeem the bottles for reuse at the Coke plant on the mainland.
Then, to Ward’s drugstore. where 25 cents would buy me one hot dog and a coke for lunch.
Then, row back home...
No date that I can see but it was printed in the USA.
Unfortunately that probably wasn’t from too many years before my birth in 64. When I started driving in the 80s I could still get a gallon of gas in the 50 and 60 cent range.
Until you realize that minimum wage was $0.75 per hour!
At $0.75 per hour, you had to work 32 minutes to buy that $0.40 Ham Sandwich.
At today's minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, 32 minutes would get you $3.87, which is about what a Ham Sandwich costs at Hardee’s or Arby’s.
The more things change, the more they stay the same!!
In the late sixties gas ran around 19 to 29 cents.
Gas wars could push it down to 14 cents.
In small burger stands where the owner did most of the cooking, 25 cents could get a small burger and a coke.