I can’t do any better than this…
And I DO remember my parents talking about some of these things, in 1957. We had a black and white TV, with three channels, and it was only turned on after supper for an hour or two. I was allowed to watch cartoons for a couple of hours on Saturday morning, but that was it.
Our family doctor still made house calls in those days too…
I remember the same. I also remember in 1964 a pack of cigarettes from a machine cost 35 cents and you got it with 3 pennies taped to the pack.
B&W TV with 4 channels (but PBS was snowy as hell, couldn’t tell what was going on). No malls – Mom and Dad went window shopping at furniture stores, or the airport to watch planes come and go. A&W root beer floats occasionally, more often pork skins shared bag at the 7-11. Real party animals we, lol.
When we were teenagers, my Brother and I often went hunting right out the back door. Abandoned orchards for dove, quail and rabbit. Irrigation canal for largemouth bass, channel cats and ‘perch’. Its all gone now, damnable urban sprawl. We were lucky to have it though.
I remember my mother saying, “I remember when you could buy a week’s groceries for $20” and “Fish used to be cheap until they decided that it was better for you than red meat.”
Medical expenses have indeed skyrocketed. Back in ’75 I left work one night due to illness and wound up in the ER(bad case of the flu). Total bill was under $50. In 2008 my BP spiked on me and I wound up in an ER again. This time it was well over $1000. I hate to think of what it’d be nowadays.
One of the things ’60 Minutes’ reported on around 1980 was the rising cost of medical bills, and it all came back to Medicade/Medicare and those two programs setting the price across the board for all procedures. Add in needing to hire help to deal with all the paperwork and there you go.
Seriously. Government-set prices and having to remain compliant are what has driven up medical prices until January 20, 2009. Then prices went through the roof as someone I won’t mention stuck his sticky fingers into the system and truly screwed us all over.
Those were the days… I remember them all too well. When I was first married, 53 years ago (same lady today, thank you!) our rental cost us $50 per month, not including utilities… two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bath, on the water. I remember pumping gas on Route 66 for $.199 per gallon, except when there was a price war on (the lowest we hit was $.099).
Oh well.
Jim, medical care is a criminal enterprise, corporations figured out they can charge the heck out of us with undecipherable bills with the government help and complicity.
1962 I was making $55 a week.
I recall grandparents grumping about stamps going from 10 to 13 cents, when $10 of groceries fitting into one (paper) bag WAS the news for a week or so, and I’ve *met* some who quit smoking due to cig. packs going all the way up to a quarter. And I do remember cigarette vending machines in active use. And that was all 20 years later, more or less.
I remember those days. I remember the TV wasn’t on until after dinner and Dad decided what we would watch. Bed time was 8 o’clock and if you whined or did not eat dinner it was earlier than that.
I have a vague recollection of a 17-cent gallon of gas during a “gas war”. Early ’60s.
B&W TV, one channel over the air until CATV (AKA cable) came to town to bring in the three network affiliates from a distant metro area. I remember when I was about eight or so, dad gave me three bucks to ride my bike to the grocery store and pick up a carton of smokes for him (he was busy doing yard work). If I recall correctly there some change from the three dollars. One wonders how we survived.
The family had a Black and White TV until it finally died in 1976.
Color was amazing.
I remember going to a neighbor’s house to watch the Apollo launches in COLOR!!! OOOOOoooooohhhh!
Kids these days, no idea.
And, yes, I was the remote for the tv and it’s replacement. Do they still make tvs with accessible controls?
Hey Old NFO;
I remembered looking at paper catalogs and dreaming of stuff that I wanted and waiting weeks for the package to come in….Now it on a computer and virtual, and you can get it in 2 days…
All- Seems I’m not the only old fart… LOL And yes, I was the remote, and antenna tuner too.
Posted from my iPhone.
My dad passed in July of last year. He used to say: “Next, we’ll be entering the age of the 5-dollar ice cream cone…”
That was in the 1970s.
“Kids these days, no idea.”
Really guys. I’m the same age as the rest of you but I think we should give that particular meme a rest.
Do YOU have “any idea” of what your grand parents did back in their day?
How about no TV at all, and radio wasn’t even a thing before the late twenties.
How about no plumbing, and except for the rich, going to the bathroom meant an outhouse – even in the cities! One of the houses I grew up in had one of those “urban” outhouses still. It was unused because by the time we moved in the house had indoor plumbing – still, it was there. (In the winter, can you say “chamber pot”.) My grandmother had a commode that was essentially a chair with a liftable lid that uncovered a hole with an enameled pot under it.
Then there was going to town. They, my grandparents, lived about 20 miles from the nearest town – a town of about 1500 people. About once a week, if the weather was nice enough, they would hitch up the team to go do their shopping and errands. About twice a year, they would take that team to the railroad depot and catch the train to the nearest city – about 60 miles away. Did I mention that very few of the roads were paved, and almost none outside of town.
My point is, every generation says the same things about the following generation. “Kids these days!” I suspect that meme goes all the way back into the dimmest reaches of time and will continue on into the unforeseeable future.
Grandma had stories that were, roughly, “You want hot water? You know where the well is, where the wood is, and where the stove is.”
Other grandma told how a fantastic wonderdrug was big news: sulfa!
I grew up in the Chicago area, so we had channels 2(CBS), 4(ind), 5(NBC) 7(ABC), 9(ind) and 11(PBS). Then we got two UHF channels, 26(ind) and 32(ind). The first time I saw color TV was at my Dad’s boss’ house, and we watched Bonanza. Dad never bought a color set until the year “Batman” came on. Got home from school, and there was brand-new color set, installed and ready-to-go!
I don’t remember the lowest price I paid for gas, but I do remember being able to buy 100 octane premium for 38 cents a gallon, and Sunoco 260 was around 42~45 cents.
Yeah, and my parents in shock over $1 milk and bread!
All- Thanks for the comments!
On the road, from my iPhone.