Yesterday, we looked at 1950 grocery prices, and today we move to 1960. Here’s a snapshot of what grocery prices looked like sixty years ago, with an emphasis on Thanksgiving fixings, from the November 21, 1960 issue of the Pittsburgh Press.
The turkey itself would set you back 39 cents per pound. If you were a non-traditionalist, hams started for about 69 cents per pound.
The cranberry sauce was two cans for 45 cents. If you were going to make your own cranberry sauce, the berries were 19 cents per pound. And if you were making your own pie (which you probably did), the pumpkin was two cans for 39 cents.
Mayonnaise was 69 cents for a quart, and you could get 8 one-pound cans of Van Camp Pork and Beans for a dollar. Jello was 12 boxes for a dollar, and cake mixes were three for a dollar.
In the produce department, oranges were two dozen for 79 cents, and lettuce was 2 for 35 cents.
A dog and a cat die and go to Heaven. St. Peter ushers them in together to the foot of God’s throne. God addresses the dog first. “What did you learn on your sojourn on earth, my child?”
Awed the dog bowed his head and spoke humbly. “ I learned I was man’s best friend. I was to serve him, protect him, and above all, love him unfailingly.”
“Well done,” proclaimed God, turning to the cat. “And you?”
An agitated patient was stomping around the psychiatrist’s office, running his hands through his hair, almost in tears.
“Doctor, my memory’s gone. Gone! I can’t remember my wife’s name. Can’t remember my children’s names. Can’t remember what kind of car I drive. Can’t remember where I work. It was all I could do to find my way here.”
“Calm down. How long have you been like this?”
“Like what?”
An elderly man was talking with a friend: “My wife and I tried a new Chinese restaurant the other night. It was really good. I think you and your wife would enjoy it.”
Friend: “Really. We’ll have to try it. What was the name of the Restaurant?”
Elderly man: “Oh, let’s see, ….what WAS the name….I just can’t quite think of it…..hmmmm…………………..uhh, what’s the name of a flower…..real popular….. long-stemmed…..thorns….?”
Friend: Rose??
Elderly man: Yes! That’s it! ……Rose, hey Rose, what was the name of that new restaurant we went to the other night?
Poor Hearing Joke:
A man goes to the doctor and complains that his wife can’t hear him.
“How bad is it?” the doctor asks.
“I have no idea”, says the husband.
“Well, please test her. Stand 20 feet away from her and say something. If she doesn’t hear you, get closer and say the same thing. Keep moving closer and repeating the comment until she does hear you. That way we’ll have an idea of her range of hearing loss.”
So the man goes home and sees his wife in the kitchen chopping up vegetables for dinner.
From 20 feet: “What are we having for dinner?” No answer. From 10 feet, same thing. From 5 feet, same thing. Finally he’s standing right behind her … “What’s for dinner?”
She turns around, looks at him and says “For the FOURTH time … BEEF STEW!!!”
Three elderly women lived together in an old house.
On a particular day, one of the women was sitting in the parlor doing her knitting.
Another one of the women was standing on the staircase landing and said, with consternation in her voice, “Now, was I going up the stairs, or was I going down the stairs?”
A few seconds later the lady who was knitting heard the other woman say, voice full of confusion, as she was standing mid-calf deep in the tub, “Was I getting into the tub or was I getting out of the tub?”
The woman in the parlor set down her knitting and said, “I sure am glad that I’m not like those two— knock on wood!” as she leaned forward and rapped her knuckles on the coffee table. Then she said, “Hey, was that the front door or was that the back door?”
A man was invited to dinner by his elderly neighbors. The old gentleman endearingly preceded every request to his wife with ‘Honey,’ ‘Darling,’ ‘Sweetheart,’ ‘Pumpkin,’ etc.
The man was impressed since the couple had been married almost 70 years. While the wife was off in the kitchen, he said to the gentleman, “I think it’s wonderful that after all the years you’ve been married, you still refer to your wife in those terms.”
The elderly husband just hung his head. “Actually, I forgot her name about 10 years ago.”
God grant me the Senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.
As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang.
Answering, he heard his wife’s voice urgently warning him, “Herman, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on Interstate 280. Please be careful!”
Herman said, “It’s not just one car. There’s hundreds of them!”
Two old ladies have played bridge together for years. Naturally they had gotten to know each other very well. One day during a game one lady suddenly looks up at the other and says, “Now dear, I know that we’ve known each other for many years, so please don’t be angry or upset by this. But could you please tell me your name? I’m trying to remember, but I just can’t bring it to mind.”
The other lady glares at her for a full three minutes and replies, “How soon do you need to know?”
Getting to Heaven:
An 85-year-old couple, after being married for almost 60 years, died in a car crash.
They had been in good health the last ten years, mainly due to her interest in health food and exercising.
When they reached the Pearly Gates, St. Peter took them to their mansion, which was decked out with a beautiful kitchen, master bath suite and a Jacuzzi.
As they looked around, the old man asked St. Peter how much all this was going to cost. ‘It’s free,’ St. Peter replied, ‘this is Heaven.’
Next, they went out in the back yard to survey the championship-style golf course that the home was located on. They would have golfing privileges every day and each week the course changed to a new one representing the great golf courses on earth. The old man asked, ‘What are the green fees?’ St. Peter replied, ‘This is heaven, you play for free.’
Next, they went to the club house and saw the lavish buffet lunch with the cuisine’s of the World laid out. ‘How much to eat?’ asked the old man.
‘Don’t you understand yet? This is heaven, it is free!’ St. Peter replied, with some exasperation.
‘Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol tables?’ the old man asked timidly. St. Peter lectured, ‘That’s the best part – you can eat as much as you like of whatever you like and you never get fat and you never get sick. This is Heaven.’
With that, the old man went into a fit of anger, throwing down his hat and stomping on it, and screaming wildly. St. Peter and his wife both tried to calm him down, asking him what was wrong.
The old man looked at his wife and said, ‘This is all your fault! If it weren’t for your blasted bran muffins and exercise, I could have been here ten years ago!’
Out for a Drive
Two elderly women were out driving in a large car, both could barely see over the dashboard. As they were cruising along they came to an intersection. The stoplight was red but they just went on through. The woman in the passenger seat thought to herself, “I must be losing my mind, I swear we just went through a red light.”
After a few more minutes they came to another intersection and the light was red again, and again they went right through. This time the woman in the passenger seat was almost sure that the light had been red, but was really concerned that she was mistaken. She was getting nervous and decided to pay very close attention to the road and the next intersection to see what was going on.
At the next intersection, sure enough, the light was definitely red and they went right through. She turned to the woman driving and said, “Mildred! Did you know we just ran through three red lights in a row! You could have killed us!”
Mildred turned to her and said, “Oh, am I driving?”
Time may be a great healer; but it’s a lousy beautician!
A woman is worried about an older woman, a widow, who lives in the apartment next door. She hasn’t heard anything from her for a few days.
So she tells her son, “I want you to go next door and see how ol’ Mrs. Pierpoint is.”
A few minutes later, the boy returns.
“Well, is she all right?” the mother asks.
“She’s fine, but she’s annoyed with you,” he says.
“At me? Whatever for?”
“Well,” says her son, “Mrs. Pierpoint told me it’s none of your business how old she is.”
While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered,
Daddy not only disliked reading, he was offended by it. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Put that book down and clean out your closet! Wash the woodwork! Get out there and rake the yard!” It didn’t do to let Daddy catch you reading if he was in a bad mood. It didn’t take much to stimulate a bad mood, in the unlikely event he didn’t already have one going. You could always count on getting caught with a book to do it.
Mother was a voracious reader and a casual housekeeper, a problem for Daddy. He needed an illiterate automaton. It set Daddy on fire to stomp through and find Mother reading, especially with dishes stacked in the sink or the floor needed sweeping, which frequently happened. Not to mention, she had five children, ensuring in inordinate amount of work, even for an organized person. No one ever accused Mother of being organized.
Not only that, Daddy frequently pulled Mother away to help him or sent her to town for something he needed. Both Daddy and Mother had more work than they could do. In addition to his paper mill job, Daddy was building a farm and cattle herd. Mother had to put biscuits in the oven before she went out to milk the cow and feed chickens. Neither ever had a minute to spare. Like all farm kids, we were pressed into service as early as possible. Everybody worked all the time, building fences, gardening, making hay, on and on, and on.
Mother read whenever she could steal a minute, while rocking a baby, while drinking coffee, while Daddy and the kids watched TV at night. Daddy hated that. He said “If I had time to read, I’d read the Bible.” I wondered at the time why he didn’t do that instead of watch TV, but didn’t bother to ask.
He’d only read two books in his life, Old Yeller and The Lilies of the Field, probably for school.
Naturally, several of his children did plenty of sneaky reading.
Old ranch owner John farmed a small ranch in Montana. The Montana Wage and Hour Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his workers and sent an agent out to interview him.
“I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,” demanded the agent.
“Well,” replied old John, “There’s my ranch hand who’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him $600 a week plus free room and board. The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $500 a week plus free room and board. Then there’s the half-wit who works about 18 hours every day and does about 90 percent of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night.”
“That’s the guy I want to talk to, the half-wit,” says the agent.
“That would be me,” replied old rancher John.
A man was driving for hours through desolate country when he passed a farmhouse, and before he could react, a cat ran out in front of him and*splat* — he flattened the cat. Out of kindness and consideration, he stopped, turned around and drove back to the farmhouse to notify the occupants. When the housewife came to the door, he said, “Pardon me ma’am, but I just ran over a cat in front of your house, and assumed that it must belong to you. I know this might be hard to hear, but I wanted to let you know instead of just driving off.”
“Not so fast,” she says. “How do you know it was our cat? Could you describe him? What does he look like?”
The man promptly flopped down on the ground, and said, “He looks like this” as he gave his best shot at a dead cat impression.
“Oh no, you horrible man,” she replied. “I meant, what did he look like before you hit him?”
At that, the man got up , covered his eyes with both hands and screamed, “Agggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
See this great old school bus. It is so much nicer than the one Daddy acquired for the unbelievable sum of fifty dollars. He purchased it from his brother-in-law, who’d gotten stuck with it as payment body work. Daddy was ahead of his time In acquiring this Tiny House. Mother was furious. Fifty dollars would have bought more than two week’s supply of groceries. Though he gave Mother no end of grief about her extravagant spending at the grocery store, he wasn’t short-sighted and saw the great potential in this bus-camper. It would be a wonderful shelter when he and his buddies went deer hunting, and oh yes, the family could use it for camping, too! Now our camper wasn’t nearly so nice as the one pictured above. It had been partially hand-painted bright silver and lacked a motor. The good news was, we could finish it up any color we liked and motors take up a lot of unnecessary space better used for storage. In that special storage area, items were stored in boxes on one deep shelf or in boxes on the floor beneath the shelf. While the rest of us were out fishing, swimming, or just running wild in general, Mother drug boxes out and dug through them for dishes, pots and pans, and food, all this with two babies in diapers. She complained about her back constantly. What a whiner! .
See how comfortable and well-appointed the camper pictured above is. Ours was nothing like this. There was no refrigerator, lighting, water, bathroom, hard-wood floors, or Benjamin Franklin wood burning stove. There was, however, an ancient gas range Daddy hooked to a propane bottle. It had two functioning burners and a defunct oven. That was okay, since Mother insisted it had a propane leak and she was scared to use it longer than it took to heat a can of beans or cook eggs. She cooked with all the windows open and made Daddy cut the fuel off every time she got through. In fact, it did have a propane leak in the line, but that’s a story for another day. Two full-size bunk beds filled the rear of the camper. Two sets of old army bunks were stacked along either side. Of course, we fought over the top bunks. The lower bunks served as seating. A lantern and flash lights served when light was needed. It was perfect. I remember one wonderful camping trip when Daddy pulled it to a creek bank. We swam, fished, swatted mosquitoes, cooked outdoors, only going in to sleep, so exhausted we hardly moved till morning. Mother got up several times every night to spray to camper with bug killer and spray the covers and any exposed skin with mosquito repellent. We scratched bug bites and poison ivy for days after we got home. That was our only family camping trip. Daddy used it a time or two for hunting, then gave it up as too much trouble. It had a couple of other incarnations as a home for a farm laborer who confirmed the stove fuel line leak before it descended so far down the social scale it ended life as a junk shed on Daddy’s farm. To me, that camper was worth every cent!
A jogger running down a country road is startled as a horse yells at him “Hey-come over hear buddy”. The jogger is stunned but runs over to the fence where the horse is standing and asks”Were you talking to me”? The horse replies”Sure was, man I’ve got a problem. I won the Kentucky Derby a few years ago and this farmer bought me and now all I do is pull a plow and I’m sick of it. Why don’t you run up to the house and offer him $5,000 to buy me. I’ll make you some money cause I can still run.” The jogger thought to himself,”boy a talking horse” Dollar signs started appearing in his head. So he runs to the house and the old farmer is sitting on the porch. The jogger tells the farmer”Hey man I’ll give you $5,000 for that old broken down nag you’ve got in the field”. The farmer replies”Son you can’t believe anything that horse says-He’s never even been to Kentucky.
My sweet wife and I were at a table at her high school
reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his
drink as he sat alone nearby.
I asked her, “Do you know him?”
“Yes”, she sighed,
“He’s an old boyfriend. I understand he took to drinking
right after we split up and
hasn’t been sober since.”
“My God!” I said, “Who would think a person could go on
celebrating that long?”
And then the fight started…
________________________________
When our lawn mower broke, my wife kept telling me that I should get it fixed.
But, somehow I always had something else to take care of first, the shed, the boat,
making beer.. Always something more important.
Finally she thought of a snotty way to make her point.
When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing
I handed her a toothbrush.
scissors. I watched quietly and then went into
the house. I was gone only a minute, and when I came out again
I said, “When you finish cutting the
grass, you might as well sweep the driveway.”
The doctors say I will walk again, but I will always have a limp.
_____________________________
My wife sat down next to me as I was flipping channels.
She asked, “What’s on TV?”
I said, “Dust.”
And then the fight started…
________________________________
Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the
boat up to the van and proceeded to back out into a terrible rain storm. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather
would be bad all day.
I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife’s back;
now with a different anticipation,
and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.”
My loving wife of 5 years replied, “And, can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?”
And that’s how the fight started…
_______________________________
My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.
She said, “I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in 3 seconds.”
I bought her a bathroom scale.
And then the fight started……
______________________________
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply
for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me
for my driver’s License to verify my age. I looked in my pockets
and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that
I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.
The woman said, ‘Unbutton your shirt’.
So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair.
She said, ‘That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me’ and she processed my Social Security application.
When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.
She said, ‘You should have dropped
your pants. You might have gotten disability too.’
And then the fight started…
________________________________
My wife was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror.
She was not happy with what she saw and said to me,
“I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you
to pay me a compliment.’
I replied, “Your eyesight’s nearly perfect.”
And then the fight started……..
________________________________
I rear-ended a car this morning…the start of a REALLY bad start to the day!
The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF!!
He looked up at me and said ‘I am NOT Happy!’
So I said, ‘Which one ARE you then?’
That’s how the fight started.
________________________________
One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot
as a Christmas gift…
The next year, I didn’t buy her a gift.
When she asked me why, I replied,
“Well, you still haven’t used the gift I bought you last year!”
Nutsrok 