$0.25 per pack from a vending machine in front of the local grocery/drug store. There were 2 newly-minted pennies inside the celophane that I always got to keep for running the errand.
I was also able to ride my Schwin stingray to the same store on any Sunday afternoon with a .22 rifle on the handlebars, buy a box of ammunition for it, a pack of cigarettes, candy bars and Dr. Peppers for myself and tour on out to a (sometimes) dry lakebed and shoot rabbits all afternoon at the age of 9.
(sigh)
” There were 2 newly-minted pennies inside the celophane “
Don’t forget the matches - depending on the machine, ya always got one or two packs of matches with each pack of cigarettes...
(And they were the good kind - the kind you could light with one hand... ;))
I couldn’t actually buy smokes nor did I particularly care for a lot of it in my presence (my eyes and nose were too liberal), but my folks would get me both boxes of cigars and cartons of cigarettes to give as holiday presents to my uncles! Which I would duly wrap and tag “To Uncle Murgatroyd From HiTech” (names falsified to protect the guilty and the innocent).
I remember that country. It was called ‘America’, back when it was a sovereign republic. It had a dangerous organizing principle called ‘liberty’, which has been progressively phased out as we have been integrated into the New World Order. Now we have ‘homeland security’, which is much warmer and fuzzier than scary old liberty.
I got gypped! I never used to get to keep the pennies. But then I only remember the pennies from a Florida trip my family took. I think the price of the cigarettes went up to 28 cents so you had to put 30 cents in the machine and the change was returned inside the cellophane.
ML/NJ
I was 7 yrs old, mom had some guests coming and sent me to the store with a note” one bottle whiskey” and the money.
They didn’t give it to me, sent me back home. My mother was German, we had just immigrated and in Germany there was no age limit on buying alcohol.ha.
We laughed about that story later and thought the guy probably thought this woman was a drunk who sent her kid for the booze.ha.