Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for October 15, 2023

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old— and when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders

You got more for the money but then got paid in a commensurate fashion that makes pricing then look as high as the Alps, as it does now but at least the money was “precious”.

A comic book once cost ten cents. Now, it costs between 2 and three dollars.

Good to see Walt. I’m really tired of that bear.

There’s always Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Family Dollar.

1973. Rolling Stones. Opening act, Stevie Wonder. $6.50. And we complained that the tickets were overpriced.

There’s a wonderful tribute to Frank King in today’s Mutts Sunday comic. Not on GoComics but available to read at Mutts dot com

Once there were dime stores. Now they have Dollar Tree and Five Below.

1987 I looked at a new Chevy half ton pickup with air conditioning, about $8000, I was making $32k a year. Now the most basic pickup is $35k, I was making $40k a year when I retired. Plus the 1987 pickup I could fix myself.

The last time gas was 10 cents a gallon the average US wage was $471 a year—about $9 a week (panel 2). Don’t know when “years ago” was but in 1950 the average US wage was $64 per week, so groceries would have cost almost a quarter of your salary. Even with recent inflation American food is way cheaper than in earlier eras measured as a percentage of income.

I remember when I was a kid, my father would pull our station wagon into a service station and tell the attendant to give him “two dollars’ worth”. The tank would get filled and my father would get change back from his two dollars.

I used to deposit my weekly paycheck, keeping $50 cash. I paid cash for food and gasoline.

I calculated that soft drinks purchased from a vending machine would be about $8 / gallon. And that was in 1999. What was worse, one of the soft drinks was water.

Decades ago, I read about a talk given by a motivational speaker. In this session, he was trying to help fathers and sons understand each other. He asks the sons how much do athletic shoes cost? About $100. He asks the sons to imagine a future when they are fathers: Your son comes to you, saying he needs new athletic shoes. “Only $1,000. PLeeease …” The boys’ reaction is “That won’t happen! A $1,000 for shoes!” The speaker points out it did happen to their fathers. When their fathers were teens, sneakers had rubber soles and canvas tops. They cost maybe $10. Now, their kids are asking for $100 shoes.

It’s not just inflation. Some of the price difference reflects improvements in technology.

Locally, gas is more than the cheapest milk. For me that’s at Aldi. The supermarket keep the store brand milk fairly cheap, and is about the same as gas.

Kellogg’s Pep cereal was a sponsor of radio’s The Adventures of Superman. It was their version of Wheaties. The cereal was discontinued in the late 1970s.

Post Toasties was originally called Elijah’s Manna until outcry from religious groups, coupled with lagging sales, led to the name change in 1908. The cereal was discontinued in 2016.

Wheaties is still going strong.

Walt’s comment in the last panel brings to mind the opening scene of this cartoon:

https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=ML8CRJxVFVg

Back in the 40s America was recovering from the Great Depression of the 30s. There were no big box stores, my mother in the 1950s went to a small grocery store with one checkout counter that was near our house.

My mother said that when she went to school in the late 20’s and early 30’s a box of 12 pencils was a penny, but said her mother told those pennies were hard to come by.