Thoughts of…yesteryear?
Posted by: Sue“Yesteryear” has been on my mind a lot lately. This is largely because I saw a coupon recently under the heading of “yesteryear” prices. It was for tuna for .39 a can. Now, if you’ve been following this blog, you may think “didn’t she do an entry about how cheap tuna prices were?” And if you thought that, you are correct. I wrote that article in March of 2007. And in it, I commented that it was getting very easy to find tuna for less than .39 a can.
I guess we’ve defined “yesteryear”. Apparently, it’s less than two years ago.
Now, that’s not how I myself think of yesteryear. For me, it conjures up an old-timey feel. Sorry to say, 2007 does not conjure up “old-timey” for me. I realize that as I get older, the passage of time seems to speed up. But not that fast. When I hear “yesteryear”, for some reason I think of the 1890′s. Why, I don’t know. You probably think of something else.
I realize I’m getting older. I’m past 50, and have almost as many years of memories. For some strange reason, I remember a few prices from my childhood – now that could be called yesteryear, I guess. So for the purpose of this entry, I’m going to define yesteryear as my childhood years. So let’s go back in time and take a look at a few yesteryear prices.
Gum – this was a nickel a pack. Why does this stand out in my mind? Because I can hear my mom saying “gum will always be a nickel a pack.” Guess she was wrong on that one. Her Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Doublemint go for a good bit more than a nickel a pack these days.
Candy bars were ten cents. I remember that because, well, it involved CHOCOLATE. What I don’t remember is how big the candy bars were. Now, granted, they might have been a bit smaller – we hadn’t supersized all that much. As my hand was smaller then, the candy bar might have been smaller in size. I guess I could research that. Tomorrow.
Oops. I guess that’s the extent of my memories of childhood prices. I was not doing a lot of shopping in those days. The cost of a candy bar, and the cost of a pack of gum. Childhood priorities can differ greatly from adult ones (although chocolate remains an important food group.) Guess it’s not that surprising that the food prices I remember from my childhood are those of items I spent my allowance on.
For a couple of more examples, I have supplemented my own memories with a little online research.
In one of the articles, I read that asparagus was 19 cents a pound in the mid-60′s. I would not remember this, I’m sure, because asparagus was one of the few vegetables I actually did not like. Times have changed and it’s on tonight’s dinner menu. I found an awesome sale on it, and paid $1.49 a pound. But I’ve seen it as high as $4 per pound. Now, that’s a big “yesteryear” difference. Hey, I really, really, REALLY want to find that kind of price on asparagus.
The same article said that sliced bacon was 29 cents a pound – I’m feeling faint. We’re talking BACON. The bacon I cooked for breakfast this morning was $4.XX a pound. Now, it was awesome bacon, from my favorite northwoods butcher shop. But even cheap bacon – can it be found for less than $2.XX a pound?
I could go on and on but I won’t. Even though it occurs to me that I could really do a “yesteryear” prices of items and go back further in time. I realize wages – and other prices - were much lower in the 60′s; no argument there. But hearing a price I regularly paid two years ago called a “yesteryear” price has me scratching my head. And feeling very old.
And if anybody finds those yesteryear prices I mentioned for asparagus…or bacon…or chocolate - please save some for me!