Good Old Days
A part of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s was the average person’s easy access to things which made us feel good. For a few cents you could enjoy objects and experiences that, with the advent of a perverse capitalistic overreach, became rare and inaccessible. I speak, this time, of coffee, children’s toys and comic books.
COFFEE
For me, Saturday in 1960 is a moment frozen in time. I’m seated next to my father on a faux leather-covered stool at the lunch counter at Reese’s Drug Store in a nameless little town in Illinois. My dad consumes refill after refill of a so-called “bottomless cup” of coffee, available to all comers for ten cents. While dad drank his fill and incinerated a fistful of Old Gold filterless cigarettes, I eagerly consumed a thirty-five cent malted–two and a half glasses full.
What has happened to the venerable cup of joe? In 1960, a pound of coffee cost $.75; adjusted for inflation, that translates to $7.00, an increase by a factor of approximately 10. The price of a cup of Starbucks coffee is presently $3.65, an increase by a factor or more than 35.
And the bastardization of the brew: Starbucks has conjured a monstrosity known as a Super Venti Flat White, which they sold at least once, for some $148.99. What the hell happened to coffee?
TOYS
Time was when a youngster from the poor side of the tracks–like myself–could go to Goodwill or the Salvation Army Thrift Store or to a random neighborhood yard sale and score a coveted toy that only their more prosperous friends could get by conventional means.
Of course, there have always been collectors of rare or unusual items, but sometime in the late 20th century, middleaged men began scooping up GI Joes, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, Ponytail Barbies, Easy-Bake Ovens, Spirographs, Hot Wheels, Etch-a-Sketches and the magnificent Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
There is yet a lot of good play time left in such toys, but these men, who never had and never will have a date, hoard them, put them on a shelf and calculate their appreciated value. They stalk thrift stores, clutching price guide books, shoving little shavers out of their way. There oughta’ be a law!
COMIC BOOKS
When I was a little kid, comic books were fun, they were tradeable and they cost a dime. A nascent collector culture developing at the time priced an Action No. 1 book (the one that introduced the world to Superman) at the unbelievably steep price of $100. I would’ve had to save my meager allowance for two years to accrue such a sum.
The same volume today, according to a well-respected auction house, “can fetch” upwards of $10 million. Now you not only have to be an adult to enjoy this literary nicety, you have to be insufferably wealthy as well. To me, a comic book is forever worth ten cents. And you don’t slide comic books into plastic sleeves.
To inflate its price is to bastardize the institution of “graphic novels” and dump poop on a cherished part of childhood. Nowadays you can’t enjoy the comic book the way it was meant to be enjoyed, by reading it in the bathtub or under the covers with a flashlight; you have to solemnly observe it through a glass screen in an environmentally-controlled chamber, somberly awaiting the day that your comic appreciates from $10 million to $11 million. Yikes!