July 23, 2012

• In Memory’s Thrall: A Wayback Post

  This blog entry was originally written for a participatory blogring back in 2008 on the subject of  “I REMEMBER WHEN. . .Here’s a sample: I remember when penny candy really only cost a penny!”

  

  Both the above magazine covers deal with the subject of “penny candy”

  Invariably any story about the past always includes the quantification of goods and services. When I was born, for instance, in 1953, during the “baby boom”, when the country was flush with optimism following WWII, a loaf of bread cost 16 cents. Milk was 94 cents a gallon. A new car could be had for less then two grand. A house cost less than $18,000.00. Stamps were 3 cents each.

  How grand. How inexpensive, everyone always marvels. A new car for less than two thousand dollars!! My, everyone must have been rich in the past!

  Of course, everyone wasn’t rich. I don’t personally “remember” what things were like the year I was born, but prices were pretty low throughout the time I was growing up, especially compared to now. However, the yearly average income during that time was less than $5,000.00 a year, or more succinctly, 75 cents an hour. Whenever you read about the worth of something in the past, it is always “adjusted for inflation”. Goods and services keep getting more and more expensive. During the 50s, as I spent my childhood with no real thoughts of financial security, owing to the fact that we lived fairly well, everyone around me seemed to be doing fairly well too. As I was growing up, here are some things I remember.

  I remember when neighborhoods in Southern California were constructed of single family ranch style homes, separated by wide yards filled with trees and flowers. Nowadays the neighborhoods cram as many “McMansions” on a single plot as is possible. The houses are huge, usually two or three stories, but have no discernable yards at all, and one can almost touch the wall of the house next door when reaching out a window. In the 50s, a lot of neighborhoods were brand spanking new. The homes were rambling one story houses with a living room in front, and a den in the back, sometimes overlooking the pool. The neighborhood where I spent the late 50s with my parents and younger brother and sister was not newly constructed, but was on a cul de sac overlooking the Pasadena Freeway, the very first freeway in California, which had only been constructed about a decade earlier. The complete street and all the houses are gone now, replaced by a block of apartment buildings in the late 70s.

  I remember when some goods and services were hand delivered to the homes in the neighborhood. Milk came from the milkman, and was in bottles. In the early morning, you could hear birds chirping and the clink of milk bottles as the milkman made his rounds. Each family placed their empty bottles in the milk box (first made of wood, then plastic, before it disappeared altogether.) and set it outside the back door. In the Los Angeles area, we also had home delivery from the Helms Bakeryman, who always had fresh breads and pastries. At 4pm after school, the Ice Cream man would drive slowly up the street, and if we were good, Mom would let us have a nickel and go get something from the Ice Cream truck. (My memories of ice cream are especially sweet, because besides getting treats from the Ice Cream man, my father worked for Popsicle Industries, so we were always getting free popsicle treats at home brought from my dad.

  I remember when the television, which was still in it’s infancy as an electronic hearth, was not the most important piece of furniture in the house. We never had a real hearth, but our television in the 50s had doors on it you could shut closed, and nobody would know it was there. I remember singing hymns with my family on Saturday nights, reading the lyrics from Hymnals borrowed from the Baptist Church. A lot of nights instead of gathering around the TV, as a lot of familes did back then, we would perform skits and sing songs for our parents as audience during family entertainment evenings.

  I remember when time didn’t go so fast. When we are young, a year lasts a long time, especially when you’ve only lived 9 or 10 of them. I remember waiting for two long years with the anticipation of driving a car when I was in high school, and then using the $100.00 in allowance I’d saved since childhood to buy one in my junior year. Gas only cost about 39 cents a gallon in those days. During college, our close knit group of guys would go on “cruise nights” where we would circle the same eight or ten block stretch of Valley Blvd. in Alhambra or Whittier Blvd. in Whittier over and over again, looking for adventure, chicks, and fun on a Friday night. We never thought about “wasting gas” when gas was plentiful and cheap. (That said, I clearly remember the first “oil crisis” when gas shot up over a dollar a gallon, and you could only get gas on “even” or “odd” days depending on your license plate number.

  I remember when movies were shown in a single theater, and there were matinees on Saturdays which showed not only a movie but a series of short subjects. There was a balcony in the theater, and some kids would throw things like popcorn and jujubes at the kids below from the balcony seats. I remember when movies would not appear on 4000 screens at once. If you wanted to see a film when it first came out, you had to go to Westwood or Hollywood and see it in the one theater where it played sometimes for a year if it was making money. I remember waiting for 3 hours to get in to see The Exorcist in 1973. (One of the early “blockbusters”) 90 minutes to get the tickets, and another 90 minutes to get inside the theater.

  I remember singing Christmas carols in the Christmas Pageant at school before there was any flap about “Christianity vs. Secularism”. We also proudly pledged our allegiance “under God”.  Church and school were separate, but the idea of “God” seemed to be more all encompassing in the past. There weren’t too many upset atheists where and when I was going to school.

  I wish I could say I remember a time when things were better, people were safer, and life was always good. This is not the case. I remember very clearly when a President was assassinated. I remember civil defense sirens, and having to supposedly escape certain doom during an atom bomb attack by diving under our “desks” at school. Since the “desks” were nothing more than a one and a half  foot square piece of fomica glued to a metal stanchion and one whole wall of the school building was made of glass windows, this never felt right, even when I was 9 or 10.

  No matter what we can remember, no matter what we choose to forget, time goes on, things go from bad to worse to better, and then back again. Life goes on. The wheel keeps turning.

  • 12:56 pm
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