Gasoline, Twenty One Cents a Gallon!
Yes, you read that right…of course that was in the 1950s, five gallons for $1.05. Kids could drive up and down Main Street for hours on a Saturday night and never worry about running out of gas! That may sound strange, but driving up and down Main on Saturday night was a common practice for teens in the 50s.
One year we took a family road trip to California. As we traveled west, the gas was outrageously high…35 cents a gallon! We drove by the way of Salt Lake City. We even took time along the way to tour the Mormon Tabernacle, and take a quick dip in the Salt Lake…it proved to be VERY salty! ha.
On that trip our baby was 5 months old. Disposable diapers were new on the market, so I bought a few to start the trip. They were not the quality of today’s diapers and caused her severe rash, so I reverted to the few cloth diapers I had with me.
In our early marriage, the cost of groceries was something to consider. I could take $5 and buy most of our basic foods for the week! That might include hamburger, 3 lbs. for $1.00, 1 dozen eggs for 30 cents, and a bag of potatoes for pennies.
Even though I loved to sew, Olney was a mecca of fine stores in which to shop. Just to name a few… Horany’s, Perkins Timberlake, Ray’s Shoe Store, McCarry’s Men’s Store, Bushey’s, McMahon’s, and later there was Hughey’s.
Olney was self-sufficient in the 50s & 60s. There were at least 10 grocery stores scattered around town, and a filling station on almost every corner. There were four drug stores, three lumber yards, four new car dealerships, and several auto parts stores. There were two movie theaters and a drive-in theater. Oh! And of course there was Joe Ross’s No-D-Lay Restaurant (people came from miles around to eat). The contrast between then and now is astounding! We wonder what our world is coming to. There is an old song from the 70s that comes to my mind when I contemplate the world we live in today. One of the lines of the song says;
“A piece of bread will buy a bag of gold, I wish we’d all been ready.”