1955

 
I thought some of you guys and gals would get a kick out of this.................I was in the Air port in Las Vegas last night and bought three waters and two Cinnamon rolls for my wife and GD, price tag over $20. I thought to myself " I wonder what my Mom would think about buying Btl water in 1955", she would have kicked my Butt.

Subject: statements from 1955

These are still said today. I  am amazed at how familiar they sound but with a bigger price tag!! 

Comments made in the year 1955!
That's only 55 years ago!

'I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $10.00.

'Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $1, 000.00 will only buy a used one.

'If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. 20 cents a pack is ridiculous.

'Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging 7 cents just to mail a letter.

'If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.

'When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 25 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage.

'I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying DAMN in GONE WITH THE WIND, it seems every new movie has either HELL or DAMN in it.

'I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it in Texas ..

'Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $50,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the President.

'I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now..

'It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet.

'It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.

'I'm afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.

'Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government.

'The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on.

'There is no sense going on short trips anymore for a weekend, it costs nearly $2.00 a night to stay in a hotel.

'No one can afford to be sick anymore, at $15.00 a day in the hospital, it's too rich for my blood.'

'If they think I'll pay 30 cents for a haircut, forget it.'

 

I don't remember any of that - I guess I was too busy listening to rock 'n roll music.

My mother can never know that some of the ice cubes served to her were purchased.  You'd never hear the end of it!
 
Disneyland opened their gate for the first time.  Do you think they wondered if it would make it?

Disneyland, using the general admission or the ticket book that includes various 'level' rides was a big deal back in those days. I went with a friend (parents dropped us off) sometime during that first year it was open. We got one general admission ($2.50) and one 10 ride booklet ($4.50) that included the second admission and the ride coupons.  We saved for weeks to be able to go on that adventure.
The Pepsi slogan about "two full glasses that's a lot for a nickel" really meant something. Coke was in a 6 oz bottle, and Pepsi started selling the 12 oz bottles using that slogan. To a 12 yr old, that was a big deal.
 
Step-father bought a 1950 Studebaker Champion in 1951 It had 5500 miles on it. Price $1695. Then in 1956, our first ever new car, a Buick Special (3-holer!) 4 dr hardtop. $2400 OTD. My mom hated the car cause Dad saved a few bucks by not getting one with Power Steering. That car steered like the Queen Mary !!
 
I joined the Army right after High School (1960) Starting monthly pay for a recruit was $78 a month.
Eight years later my first year contract for Teaching (in upstate NY) was $6200. I took the job because it paid so much more than the schools in the Boston area did that year ...Typical Mass. Public School started their teachers at $5700 a year !  That $500 looked like a major financial windfall to me ! After my first winter near Oswego, I knew why they paid more !!!
 
It is very hard to talk to the next generation about the relative value of "money" when the difference is so great. I guess it was that way for our Depression-enduring parents when they watched us 'Grow Up'.

I recently saw an old (1967-68) "Dragnet" episode and Sgt. Friday had to pay 30 cents for a pack of smokes.  Nowadays the convenience stores push them as a great deal if a carton's less than $50!
 
Brad

When Disneyland opened in 1955, I dreamed of going there, knowing it was a hopeless wish. In 1957 my father was invited to a Medical convention in San Francisco,1957, he took my Mother, an older brother and me. We took the B&O[I think] to Chicago, switched to the Super Chief, and took the Southern route to LA. stayed a few days there before ending up in San Francisco, spent a day at Disneyland, all I wanted to do was drive the Autobahn, I kept pinching myself, my dreams had come true, including the long train trips which I adored, still do.
No vacation since has been so over the top for me, since!

I doubt that came from 1955 but was contemporaneously made up recently by someone with a bit of hindsight conjecture. There are too many factual errors. There were no astronauts until 1959. I know for a fact a haircut cost more than 30 cents. I had a newspaper route in 1955 that included a barber shop. I bartered my haircut at a discount of 45 cents (weekly fare) in exchange for the paper. Gone With the Wind came out in 1939. That movie wasn't contemporary to 1955. Cute but bogus.

CTF-----love the trip story.  In '75 I drove the wife and 2 youngest sons to Disney World for a few days ----stayed at the Contempory Hotel  on premises---it was
"THE IN-PLACE"  -- they still talk about that trip---
 
But, before you get in trouble you had better add all the places you ate on the trip and show pics of all the food. 

the ancient mariner


CTF-----love the trip story.  In '75 I drove the wife and 2 youngest sons to Disney World for a few days ----stayed at the Contempory Hotel  on premises---it was
"THE IN-PLACE"  -- they still talk about that trip---

But, before you get in trouble you had better add all the places you ate on the trip and show pics of all the food. 

LOL, O Ancient One, the train food wasn't "The Orient Express" type fare, as I recall, not bad though, my thrill was sitting in the "Dome Car', watching the wild west whiz by at 110 mph, they had a speedometer in the front of the car.
In LA, we ate at Tiny Naylors, a bunch, my Father was not into gourmet dining. I remember we went to a Chinese restaurant in SF, I got Birds Nest Soup as an app., when I found out why it was named that, I gagged, the very thought of sticks with bird crap on them in a soup was beyond my 11 years of fish sticks, fried chicken, meat loaf, etc., [Irish Catholic food] culinery imagination.
I think I saw Micheal Hoffman at one of the Waffle Houses we had breakfast in . 11 yrs. old, Cheeseburgers and fries thanks!

No, I don't remember hearing any of that - must have had my Davy Crockett hat pulled down over my baby ears.
Thanks, mayor al, for pointing out that people in 1955 were being paid in 1955 money. Heck, one of them brand new Thunderbirds for only $2695? Why wasn't everyone driving one of them? I'd like to find a chart that shows, over the years, how much this or that cost relative to an average salary. Some things, like color tv sets, have fairly plummeted.
From my own reference point, I remember when Ford started selling the DeTomaso Pantera in 1971 - an Italian exotic sports car, with a big-block Ford V8 - as a teenager it looked irresistible...but not at the nosebleed-territory price of $9995. Still a great bargain for a mid-engine supercar, but heck, you could get a new Corvette for $5972!

Brad_Olson


I recently saw an old (1967-68) "Dragnet" episode and Sgt. Friday had to pay 30 cents for a pack of smokes.  Nowadays the convenience stores push them as a great deal if a carton's less than $50!

Brad

We paid 15 cent for a pack of Lucky Strikes while in Vietnam in 1968.

Cigarettes were 15 cents a pack for the first two years we lived in the U.S. Virgin islands. I still recall how angry we were when the price skyrocketed to 17 cents a pack in 1969.

In 1958 I bought a brand spanking new Ford Station Wagon----Top of the line---8 cylinders with all the toys any boy could want-----for $1800.  In 1988 I bought another brand new Ford Station wagon --top of the line---with all the bells and whistles for $18,000. 
 
In 1954 I bought my first house---a 3 bedroom ranch on a 75x100 plot for $12,990.  Kept it for years as a rental and then sold it for $198,000 in 1990.
 
Funny how the prices of everything kept going up, but they are only numbers----seems like a big difference, but as the guy says, you only get what you pay for.
 
 

In 1955 I was seven. The only money I had was my allowance, which was $1 per week. On Saturdays my friend Mikey and I would walk to a pizza place on 13th avenue in Brooklyn, and for a total of $1.20 we'd split a whole pizza and each have a soda. My 60 cent share would leave me with 40 cents for the rest of the week. Plenty.

In 1959 we were newly married and living in Schenectady, NY., with a combined income from teaching of just about $13,000. One of our favorite meals was at an Italian restaurant where we ate delicious homemade spaghetti, two meatballs, sauce and a bottle of chianti (that stuff in the straw wrapped bottle) for less than $4.00, and great wursts at a German Bar with lots of beer for a couple of bucks, and club steak at the Stuyvesant Hotel bar for less than what I paid for one bottle of beer yesterday at a Mexican cafe in Kingston. We made frequent trips to NYC to Broadway shows - about $2.50 for good seats , if memory serves.
 
But, it was all in comparison with our income  - today we earn a lot more (even in retirement) and everything costs a lot more. What many people seem to forget is that federal income tax rates were much higher in the '50s and '60s than they are today; while state and local taxes have gone up a lot more in comparison. 
 
Cheers, John 
 

Mayor AL, you were making a fortune teaching. My first teaching job (Friars Point, MS in 1966) paid $4200.

mbrookes


Mayor AL, you were making a fortune teaching. My first teaching job (Friars Point, MS in 1966) paid $4200.

I'm surprised you made that much. Historically, MS has the lowest teacher salaries in the nation! I taught H.S. in Butler, PA in 1963 and made $4100/yr plus $500 for coaching the debate team! Got tired of eating cheap Hot Dogs & Kool-Aid and went into sales.

the ancient mariner


In 1958 I bought a brand spanking new Ford Station Wagon----Top of the line---8 cylinders with all the toys any boy could want-----for $1800.  In 1988 I bought another brand new Ford Station wagon --top of the line---with all the bells and whistles for $18,000. 

In 1954 I bought my first house---a 3 bedroom ranch on a 75x100 plot for $12,990.  Kept it for years as a rental and then sold it for $198,000 in 1990.

Funny how the prices of everything kept going up, but they are only numbers----seems like a big difference, but as the guy says, you only get what you pay for.

What city was the house in?

Pizza Nut Old Boy----the house was on Long Island in a town called Huntington, about 25 miles east of NYCity and about 5 from Hicksville which is named after a Hick.   Also about 5 miles from Levittown, named after a Levitt.  Huntington is noted........oh you can google it and find out all about it.

My wife grew up in Levittown - she is originally from Brooklyn and Queens - my mom and dad bought a Cape Cod style home in Yonkers in 1949 (just like those in Levittown)  for a little less than 10 grand.
 
When they both passed in 1999 it sold for a little under 200 grand.  My dad was a carpenter and very handy and over the years built a one car detached garage and finished the basement and attic.

Yeah, comparing the value of the dollar in purchasing power (as I said above) is not only an exercise in futility, It is almost impossible for the people a generation down on the family tree to comprehend the difference.  I mean I listened to my Mom's description of the depression years and the zero-income era, and watched all the movies about it too...but I really didn't grasp the 'real' impact on the people at that time.
   Now that I am the representative of the Ancient Past (in my family) my kids and especially my grandkids look at me, when I talk "money", the way I used to look at my parents.
  I guess the old line about not understanding a persons life until you've walked in their moccassans (sp?) or whatever...really is true.
 
I won't even get into the real estate roller coaster, except to say SoCal was as extreme as Long Island over the years.  My first home purchase in Upstate NY- Rural Oneida County,  was $12,000 for a 16 acre farm with a decent farm house, 2% down on the new Viet G I Bill. (1968)
 
My takehome pay from that "Windfall Teacher Contract" was $99 a week. Married, two kids, one car, and the house. Is it any wonder we didn't do much Roadfooding in that era ???

If you think about it, in 1955 almost every Restaurant was a roadfood restaurant. I guess passion and pride was more prevalent back then...

I remember selling cigarettes at my dad's drug store (.15 for non filtered and .17 for filtered). The Chicago public schools sold milk in glass bottles during lunch time for 2 cents, chocolate was 3 cents. The kid's price at the Saturday matinee was 15 cents and it was 5 cents to go swimming at the YMCA. We were all poor, but no one ever knew it because the things that made us happy were inexpensive.
 
CSD

CSD,
"Swimming at the YMCA" brought a flashback. Early-1950's. We didn't have a Y in my hometown so a couple times a year our Scout Troop would go to the YMCA in the neighboring town 15 miles away. They had an indoor pool, self enclosed. Back then the rule was No Swim Suits! You swam butt naked. No big deal---Literally! 

Our Scout troop did the same thing, but used the large Pay-for-Use pool near the Pike Amusement Park at the Rainbow Pier in Long Beach, CA. (thats now the Seaport Village and Convention Center area now). The Pool was indoors and was called the Crystal Plunge !! I have forgotten the amount they charged but it was cheap and we got a group rate for the one-night--a-month evening swims (with suits).

We used to line up naked as a jay bird against the wall next to the pool at the Boys Club waiting for the whistle to sound to plunge into the pool. There was about 25 kids with cupped hands in front of them, there was also a missing window in the upper corner of the swimming pool  room that we would hear giggles from the local girls peeking at us......The good old days, duck down, stay by the building, don't look at the flash.....I still haven't traveled to Russia, I guess it's the memory of those three things.......................