Nancy Classics by Ernie Bushmiller for May 04, 2023

In 1950 – A gallon of milk was 83 cents and one dozen eggs usually cost around 49 cents. A little girl’s dress was from $1.98 to $2.98. We bought our first home for $5,000. The house had a main floor plus a basement. Each floor was about 600 sq. feet, for a total of 1,200 square feet. At Christmas and Thanksgiving, the average turkey sold for between 55 cents and 65 cents per pound – IF you bought a turkey at the grocery store. (When we lived on the farm, we raised turkeys and, once we moved to town, we knew enough farmers who were raising turkeys to get a better deal from local farmers than the deal being offered by the local grocers. Same story about the eggs and milk.) The house had central heating and a coal furnace. About 63% of American homes were heated by coal during that time period. We got a good deal on the house because the house didn’t have a hen house. We remedied that problem by building a three-car garage. One bay was for the car, he second bay for the pickup and the third bay for chickens. You didn’t need an alarm clock because, at the crack of dawn, every rooster in town would begin crowing! There were a lot of young men who had returned from the front. When we wanted to build the garage, my Dad just went up to the drug store and announced that he needed to build a garage ans asked if there was anyone there who wanted a job. There were about 7 or 8 young men who signed up for the job. A lot of them had been Seabees during the war and had experience putting quonsets overnight – so it only took about a week to build the garage. A loaf of bread usually sold for around 12 cents and the average sirloin steak cost about 77 cents per pound. Ours cost considerably less – we baked our own bread and, when we moved to town, we sold our cattle to one of our uncles, who supplied the beef for another of my uncles, who owned a grocery store. Bananas were 27 cents for two pounds. Lettuce was 25 cents for two heads (We grew our own lettuce!)