Younger relatives ask the same question over and over: what was life like back then? The creator behind @delstonejr says his kids sometimes ask him about the 1950s and 60s, so he answered with a list of things he remembers. It is full of small details that will bring a smile if you grew up in those decades, and a few that may make you shake your head at how prices have changed.
Gas Wars And 19 Cent Gasoline
He starts with gasoline. The lowest price he ever saw was 19 cents a gallon, and it was the result of what people called a gas war. He explains how it worked: when two or three stations sat at the same intersection, one owner would drop his price a penny below the others, the others would follow, and then the first owner would lower his again. Before long, the price was down to 19 cents. Usually, he says, gas ran somewhere between 25 and 27 cents a gallon, and people were outraged when it climbed above 30 cents. Nobody could believe anyone would pay that much.
His memory lines up with the history. A table of average regular gasoline prices published by the U.S. Department of Energy shows national averages of about 27 cents in 1950, 31 cents in 1960, 30 cents in 1965 and 34 cents in 1969. Those are averages across the country, so a local gas war could easily push a neighborhood price lower, and prices in other places could be a bit higher. The same table shows that in inflation adjusted dollars, gas actually became cheaper over those two decades.
Cigarettes, Beer And The Big Television
Next come some household prices. In the mid 1960s, he says, a carton of cigarettes cost about $4, and he notes they cost over $100 now. In the early 1960s, he says, a case of beer ran about $2. He adds that he was only around five years old at the time, so he is repeating what his parents told him.
Then television. In the early 1960s, he recalls, the biggest set you could buy had a 25 inch screen and came in a huge wooden cabinet. You had about four channels, and they went off the air at night. The station would play the national anthem and then show a test pattern. He jokes that if you want to see this in action, you can watch the movie Poltergeist, which shows that stations were still signing off that way as late as the 1980s.
Telephones You Had To Stand Next To
He also remembers the telephone. It was either attached to the wall or sat on its own little table. The handset was connected to the base by a spiral cord that stretched about three feet, so you had to stay in one place for your whole conversation. To dial, you put your finger in the hole matching a number and spun the rotary dial until it hit the stop, then let it go.
And sometimes you had a party line. That meant sharing your phone line with neighbors, and if you picked up the phone there might already be somebody on it talking. According to Wikipedia’s article on party lines, most Bell System customers in the United States and Canada were on party lines in the mid twentieth century, with two party lines typical, and rural lines sometimes carrying many more subscribers. Users were encouraged to keep calls to about five minutes, and many places required you to hang up at once if a neighbor needed the line for an emergency. Privacy was minimal, since anyone could pick up and listen. Party lines were mostly gone by the late 1980s, as they could not work with answering machines, modems and newer phone features.
The $13,000 House
The detail that gets the biggest reaction is about housing. He lives in the house his parents bought in 1969. They paid $13,000, and he says it is now valued by Zillow at between $200,000 and $300,000. He also recalls that in the mid 1960s you could buy a new car for $2,500.
For comparison, a table of new single family home prices on the HUD User historical data page lists the median sales price of a new home at $20,000 in 1965 and $25,600 in 1969. His parents’ $13,000 is well below that new home median, which is not surprising. A house built earlier, in a smaller town or a modest neighborhood, would have been priced differently from a brand new home. The larger point is the same one he is making: a home that cost five figures then can be worth many times that today.
Playing Until The Street Lights Came On
The last part of his list has nothing to do with money. In the morning, after breakfast, his mom would tell him to get out of the house and go find something to do. Off he and the other kids would go, gone until about lunch time. After lunch, they headed back out and did not come home until the street lights came on. His mom would stand at the door and call for them, or flick the porch light.
He had toys too, and his favorite was the Thing Maker. He describes it as a hot plate with molds. You poured plastic into the molds and baked them to make fake cockroaches, spiders and worms, and he loved it. According to Wikipedia’s entry on the Thingmaker, Mattel introduced it in 1964. Kids poured a liquid called Plasti-Goop into metal molds shaped like bug-like creatures and heated them to about 390 degrees Fahrenheit, which cured the goop into rubbery replicas. Because it used heat, Mattel stopped selling the original after new heat related toy rules came out in 1973. A 1992 revival added a door that stayed shut until the mold had cooled enough to handle.
Share Your Own List
The charm of his post is that it is simply a person remembering. If your children or grandchildren ask what life was like, you can do the same. A few ideas for getting started:
Start with prices. Kids are amazed by what a candy bar, a movie ticket or a loaf of bread cost. If you have an old receipt or a newspaper ad, show it.
Describe how you got around the neighborhood. Ask yourself how far you could roam and when you had to be home.
Talk about the technology. A rotary phone or a television that signed off at night sounds like science fiction to a child who has grown up with a screen in every room.
Write it down. A page of memories, with the year and where you lived, becomes a family keepsake. Add a photo if you have one.
Whatever you choose, the details you take for granted are the ones that will fascinate the next generation. As this creator shows, a simple list is enough to start a good conversation.
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