Ad from my hometown..1954.

Of course, Pappy, there's also the sticker-shock or price of things compared to today.

Many say that the cost of things is all relative to each generation, but I beg to differ, and we're seeing that now with the rise of all things related to groceries.
 

My mother grew up in a little itty-bitty town in southern Ohio. I would visit my grandma and grandpa there in the summer while I was a little boy up until I was about 14. When we would visit, my mom would ask me to go along with her for a walk and she would then point out to me points of interest that were important to her while she was growing up.

To this day, that small town hasn’t advanced a whole lot from what it was when I was a little boy and as I remember it. I try to go back there every few years just for the memories and to visit my grandparent’s cemetery. The railroad tracks are mostly overgrown now, but they do have a McDonald’s, so I guess they have advanced some.
 
That ad makes me wish that I had the money and wisdom to buy a couple of the older cars...and seal them up in a controlled storage environment for decades....especially cars from the '60's and 70's....when they had some real personality.
 
So a good car for about 1000, which was a quarter of the median household income.

Now a good car would be $35000, which is a little over half of the median income.
 
Whenever I think about "hometown newspapers", I think of when I was in Navy boot camp. My mom sent me the local paper. It's a small town paper. Normally, it had six pages, and eight on Friday, with all the ads. The entire front page of the paper was a picture of the first stop light to be erected in the town. This was considered moving the town into the 20th Century, and a really big deal. I can't tell you the things my Navy buddies said about that. It was kind of hard to understand them as they rolled on the floor laughing. I wanted to strangle my mother for sending that newspaper.
 
Prices went up and quality went down. So we are further behind. I live two miles outside of a town with a population of 150.
 

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