Prices of the '70's

I have been asked, since I was a teen in the 1970's, what is was like back then as far as prices and things to do. Well, many of you who lived back then already know, but for those who don't, here are a few comparisons (prices differ from area to area, and state to state).

Back then, no soda was in plastic bottles. It was all in glass. Soda machines were not that common, but the ones we had were built to pull out the bottle from an up and down dispenser area. The one at our local gas station was 10 cents per bottle. We had drinks like Coke, Pepsi, Shasta, Dr Pepper, RC, Root Beer, and others. Root beer was very popular then. There was Dad's root beer, as well as Old-Fashioned, and Mug. Many of them came in gallon jugs, too, at the stores.
Bread was 20 cents a loaf. Changed alot, hasn't it? A large sour pickle in jars sold for a nickle at the counter. A pickle for a nickel. Gas was anywhere from 10 to 25 cents a gallon, and was usually pumped by a station attendant, who also washed your windshield if needed. A hamburger was a quarter. A cheeseburger was 30 cents. Jerky was very common as a snack then. Milk is one item that has really gone up. Back then a gallon was about 70 cents.
Is anybody having flashbacks yet?
Ther was a large amount of penny candies for sale, including fake cigarettes, double bubble, and peanut logs. Many candies of that time have been discontinued because they say it promoted smoking or drinking. The fake bubble gum cigarettes had a powder coating on the inside, so when you blew through it, the "smoke" would come out the end. There was small wax bottles that looked like a soda bottle, with a bit of juice inside. You could bite off the top, suck out the juice, then chew the bottle. Of course it had some flavor to it, but you didn't swallow it. When the flavor was gone, you just spit it out. Weird, huh?
Of course there was the bubble gum that had the baseball or other type cards in it. All the kids collected them, and traded back and forth. The trick was to try and get your favorite players card. Not so easy if the player is very popular. Times haven't changed that much, since there are many things out there using collector cards as gimmicks. Regular bar candies were a nickel, like Mars, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, etc...
You could buy a big chunk of "rat" cheese, usually sold by weight, for about a dime. That was one of my favorite snacks after school. A sour pickle with a chunk of rat cheese. Then there was, and still is today, the spicy sausage in a jar. It was a nickle then, but costs about $1 now. Weird again, huh?
Cars would sell brand new for $3000 to $5000. You could get a pretty good used car for about $1200. A fishing pole was about $5. You could buy brand new shoes for $2 or $3. Hush puppies were popular then, as well as Pro-Keds. You could buy a nice shirt for $3. A good pair of pants for $4. And not on sale either; regular price. I got really good work boots for $7. Now those same boots are over $100.
You could take your girlfriend to the movies for about $2, and if you had another dollar, you could get drinks and popcorn. Or, when I got a bit older, I could take her out to eat somewhere for about $10, which was a lot.
Also zero kids smoked cigarettes like they do now. It ws not common to see a teenager smoking. Where I grew up, the teenaged guys all dipped or chewed. Typical in cowboy country. We used Snuff, Copenhagen, Work, Beechnut, and Levi Garrett. But the most popular one was Skoal. Almost every teenaged boy had Skoal in his back pocket. It is funny that our parents would go crazy if we smoked a cigaretter, but we were "allowed" to dip. Dipping is ten times stronger than smoking a cigarette. The only rule most parents had is that you could not have a "dip in" in the house, or spit in any cups. We all used styofoam cups with a napkin inside. A can of Skoal then cost about 25 cents.

Some of the things we did NOT have in the '70's were gadgets like cellphones, tablets, or even computers. We certainly did not have laptops or google or the internet. There was no facebook. It hadn't even been thought up yet. We did not have many color TV's yet. It was a big deal for the family when we got our first color TV. There was no cable TV or satellite TV. Just an antenna sticking up by the house. We did not have digital cameras, and were lucky if we had a Polaroid camera. There werre no DVD's, CD's, or satellite radio. We had AM radios only, then later got AM/FM, then later AM/FM stereo. Our cars had 8-track tape players, if you were lucky enough to afford one. They usually cost around $25 to $40. Equalizers or boosters were separate units, and usually mounted under the dash. You could get a good one for $15. If you could afford Bose speakers, then you were rich. If you owned a home console, it was a luxury. It was usually a large unit that had an AM/FM radio built in, with a record turntable on the top, with two speakers built in on the left and right. It was one unit, and looked like a piece of furniture. These units cost over $100 then. Now they are collectors items.
I bought, brand new many years ago, a Laserdisc player. I still have it, along with about 30 disks. It was in fashion for a very short time, right before CD's came out. As soon as CD's were developed, it pretty much made the Laserdisk obsolete. I thought it was cool as hell at the time that they could put music on a disc of that type, using a laser eye to play it. That was advanced, and sounded futuristic. 
Haircuts were 25 cents, then later rose to 50 cents, and made alot of people mad. Now you can't touch a haircut for less than $12. In my home town barber shop, there were three barber chairs; usually full, as everybody back then had short hair in my area. In back of the barber shop was a pool room, with four tables. You could play pool while you waited your turn. It cost 10 cents a game. It was a simpler life then. Not so many gadgets, and not so much pressure. All you were expected to do then was put in a full days work, act and talk like a man, and treat your neighbor right. Not very true these days any more, is it?

The prices back then sound so cheap, don't they? But, of course, it was based on the economy of the time. Minimum wage was just barely above a dollar an hour, and I can remember when it was 75 cents an hour. It was just as hard, or harder, to afford things back then as it is now.