The Ledger

By Patricia McClellan

My husband and I went to a Saturday afternoon matinee recently. In less than ten minutes we dropped fifty dollars on tickets, a shared popcorn, and a drink.

You read that right. Fifty dollars!

I remember when fifty cents bought a cartoon, a double feature, popcorn, candy, and a drink! Two quarters bought us an afternoon with RoyRogers and Trigger.

Nowadays, fifty cents wouldn’t buy enough popcorn to get stuck in your teeth

Evidently popcorn became a delicacy when I wasn’t looking. It’s corn y’all, not caviar.

For fifty dollars, the actors in the movie should have walked out on stage thank us personally.

But what really got me thinking was something I saw on social media about the Georgia National Fair.

Families were talking about spending five to seven hundred dollars taking their children to the fair. 

That’s a mortgage payment for those of us who got in before the interest rates skyrocketed.

Rides that cost more than my car payment, ten-dollar lemonades and twenty-five-dollar hot dogs!

For twenty-five dollars, that hot dog better come with a pedigree and its own birth certificate!

And apparently, nobody thought anything about it!

When I was a senior in high school, lunch at McDonald’swas a treat. I’d order a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke,hand the girl a dollar, and she gave me change.

Today, a dollar might buy a packet of ketchup, but the napkin will cost extra.

Don’t get me started on the price of gasoline. If I see it below $3.50, I nearly run off the road getting to the pump before somebody realizes they’ve made a mistake.

I get downright giddy! I want to call somebody and share the good news!

And when did groceries become a luxury?

I remember filling a grocery cart without needing a second mortgage. Now you practically need financing for eggs and milk.

When my children were babies, baby food was seventeen cents a jar. Seventeen cents! That wouldn’t even cover the tax today.

Back then, we knew how to stretch a dollar. A trip to the grocery store didn’t require a financial advisor, and you didn’t have to choose between paying the rent purchasing a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs.

Now you can walk into the grocery store with a hundred dollars, come out carrying three bags, and still have to figure out what you’re going to cook for supper.

Funny how things change. We didn’t have all the conveniences we have today, and I certainly wouldn’t want to give them up. But I do miss the days when a dollar actually felt like a dollar. These days, even George Washington looks like he’s suffering from sticker shock!

I don’t want the good old days back.

I just want the prices.