I’ve Just Lived Too Long

And These Prices Are Killing Me

Thoughts from the front porch…

It looks like I have lived too long to not be truly amazed at the prices we are facing these days, especially with the rampant inflation since 2020.

The Bible says in Psalm 90:10 “Seventy years is all we have, eighty if we are strong.” It goes on to say, “yet even in the prime years there are troubles and sorrow.”

These inflated prices are giving lots of folks troubles and sorrow.

I often tell folks I have just lived too long to accept some of these prices.

Many things, like gasoline, you just have to accept their high price. All of the time I was aware of gasoline prices as a kid, they were in the 20 to 30 cents per gallon range. When I got my driver’s license in 1966, gasoline was a constant 32 cents per gallon.

I had a 1963 Ford Falcon with a 170 special engine that would run all week on $3 worth of gas. Those were the days!

As a young adult, early 20s, gas broke the 40 cents per gallon mark. I swore I wouldn’t pay it. I thought if enough people stopped buying at that price it would come down. It didn’t. I walked to work for about two weeks, it wasn’t a long walk, but after a couple of weeks I capitulated and bought the high-priced petrol.

Then the OPEC oil embargo hit and prices jumped to over $1 per gallon. There was rationing. If your license number was an even number, you could only buy gas on certain days of the week. Those with odd numbers could get gas on the other days.

Then, where I have lived, the prices broke the $2, $3 and $4 mark. I remember going to buy gasoline for my lawn mower and came home to tell my wife I had been able to squeeze $20 worth of gas into a five-gallon gas can. I was amazed then, as well. I might have paid over $5 a gallon one time in New York State.

But the gasoline is like so many other things. I’m old enough to remember eggs at less than 50 cents a dozen. Loaves of bread were 25 cents. A large cart of groceries cost $20. I could get a cup of coffee and a donut for 15 cents at a diner when I was 10 years old an delivering newspapers early in the morning.

Coffee in restaurants was served in four-ounce cups, but you got refills. For a long time the coffee price was 25 cents per cup. Now its $3 or more.

I have eaten very little bacon in the past few years. It’s not that I can’t afford the prices which are often around $10 per pound, it’s just that I don’t want to spend that much.

The demand for bacon has skyrocketed since all the fast food restaurants are buying it in huge quantities for their sandwiches. Bacon was always less than $2 a pound until the bacon burger craze hit. I had to buy three pounds at Sam’s Club this week to get it for $4.25 a pound. That’s my new limit. My cut-off point was $1.99, then $2.99 and until this week it was $3.99. Yep, I’m eating a lot less bacon.

Same with beef. We can get a lot of use out of hamburger, but $5 a pound is where I want to buy it. Sometimes its higher.

Cattle prices are astronomical. I, in another lifetime (age 25-35), was in the livestock auction business. Cattle were so cheap at times. It was a roller coaster ride for beef cattle prices. There was an old joke that a farmer brought a baby calf to the market, and instead of paying the commission to sell it inside the sale, he left the calf in his truck and put a sign up that said, “Free Baby Calf.” He went in and watched the sale and when he came back out he had two baby calves in his truck. It was a hard time for cattle farmers in the 70s and 80s.

Two farmers were talking outside the livestock market one day, back then, and one said, “If cattle prices don’t get a lot better, I’m going to have to rob a bank.” The other farmer, who had borrowed money to buy his herd, said, “If they don’t get a lot better, I already have (robbed a bank)!”

I watched a video of a livestock sale out west last week where two baby calves which weighed about 150 pounds each sold for over $1,200 each.

Farmers traditionally claimed their biggest asset was their land which continues to appreciate. But with cattle prices they way they are, they are now in a much different tax bracket.

The way it was…

I recently acquired a copy of a Simpson-Sears catalog from Canada. Simpsons-Sears was a joint effort by the Simpsons company of Canada and the Sears, Roebuck and Co., based in the U.S. A lot of Sears brands were sold by Simpsons.

Sears, in the old days, was what Amazon is today, only Sears printed big catalogs and people all across the country bought all kinds of mail-order stuff from them. They sold everything. I own a large barn that was a kit that was bought from Sears in the early 1900s. It was delivered by train. Houses were bought the same way.

The catalog I have was from the 1960s. Here are some interesting finds that illustrate how far we have come, price-wise, in my lifetime:

A 20-foot extension ladder in the Simpsons-Sears catalog in the 1960s was $28.77. The comparable ladder this week on Amazon was priced at $342.08.

The catalog promoted a huge tire sale. The “Silent Cushion” tires, guaranteed for 36 months regardless of tread wear, were $16.44 each. Whitewalls were about $3 higher. The largest, most expensive tires ran around $25.

A Craftsman Skill saw would set you back $27.99 ($4.00 monthly) in the sixties. Today it would cost at least $59 from Amazon. A cordless model would be $119.

A Craftsman Sabre saw was $29.95 in the 60s. The saw is now called a Jig Saw and a corded model is $69 on Amazon. But, you can get a Black & Decker model for about $30.

For the women, all-wool tweed winter coats were on sale for $22.99 back then. Today, Amazon has a similar coat about three times higher

For that long-legged look, you could get faux alligator leather boots for less than $7. And you could have shoes, “with that hand-sewn look” for just $3.99.

How about a Kenmore Washer for $199.95. The matching dryer would set you back $139.95.

Some things were much higher back 60 years ago.

TVs for instance. Simpons-Sears had a 23” Medalist with a hand-crafted chassis for $248.88. This was a black and white unit.

For the same money Amazon offers a Hisense 50” Class A7 Series UHD Smart Fire TV, full color and this unit can do things that were not even thought of in the 60s.

You Might Be Used To Today’s Prices

You see, people much younger than this old guy are somewhat familiar with today’s prices.

Yes, I realize people make a lot more money these days than they did back in the 1960s. The median income for all families in 1965 was about $6,900. In today’s money, that’s about $42,000. The website census.gov says the real median income for Americans in 2023 was $80,610. I still think today’s prices are too high.

Look What a Vintage Sears Catalog is worth today…

This catalog is being offered on eBay. I’ve seen Sears catalogs from the 1960s priced as high as $250. They were provided free back then.

Those huge catalogs, called Wish Books, were in almost every home in America back in the day. Many of them were used for reading and other purposes in outhouses across the country. If I had saved all the Sears Catalogs I’ve had in my life, I could sell them and take a really nice vacation. Who knew???

Thanks for reading. Your comments would add a lot to this post.

Or, you could buy me a coffee here for just $5.00. I know it would have been 10 cents back in the 1960s. Inflation happens!