Butch Ate CHEAP During College Days!!!

    After my wife I buy our groceries each Friday, both of us complain about how much we have spent…”I can’t believe it. We didn’t even get that much food!” Yes, dog food, paper products, cleaning supplies, toothpaste, soap, cosmetics, etc., etc. does take a bite out of our budget, but the high cost of actual food is crazy! Of course, we then reminisce about how cheap we ate 59 years ago…in 1966, when we got married and I started in at Purdue. I earned $1.50 an hour working part-time for my father-in-law on his farm…and then $2 an hour at National Homes in Lafayette. My wife worked full-time as a typist at the American Yorkshire Club in Lafayette and cleared $48 a week…so yes, we did have to eat cheap.

   In an earlier column I pointed out that eating at McDonalds was certainly inexpensive in 1966….hamburgers-15 cents, cheeseburgers-20 cents, fish sandwich-24 cents, fries-15 cents, and a milk shake-22 cents. Coney dogs at the A&W root beer stand were 50 cents. We ate at those two places many times during my wife’s lunch break. For breakfast I normally just ate one or two bowls of cereal. A box of Kellogg’s corn flakes was 29 cents, but I switched to Cap’n Crunch, which was 49 cents a box…loved all that sugar! My wife usually just had toast and jelly.

  We purchased our groceries at the Payless store in West Lafayette, and the cost was right around $40 a week. I looked up some of the prices back then…a dozen eggs (50 cents), Campbell’s soup (11 cents), pork chops (38 cents a pound), ground beef (29 cents a pound), broiler chicken (29 cents a pound), lettuce (25 cents a head), chicken pot pies (29 cents), and a gallon of milk (95 cents). We consumed a LOT of Banquet TV dinners, which were four for $1…and sometimes on sale 5-for-$1. I loved the sliced turkey with mashed potatoes and peas. Swanson TV dinners were also very good and included a dessert, but they were slightly higher in price. One Swanson TV dinner included sliced turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, and cranberry sauce…a regular Thanksgiving meal at 79 cents! Another great thing is that in 1966, candy bars were still just a nickel!

   Some of our other “regular” evening meals were…Lipton chicken noodle soup and cheese sandwiches, hamburgers and fries, fried chicken, meat loaf, scrambled eggs and smokey links, and anything and everything that my mother-in-law fixed for us. The one meal that we ate every week was Kraft spaghetti, which came in a green and white box, with seasoning and parmesan cheese. It cost 49 cents, and we ate that almost every week. In fact, we still eat those. During the last 59 years, I would guess that we have eaten Kraft spaghetti dinners at least two thousand times…maybe more…not because it is still cheap at $1.99…but because I love that stuff!

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 36 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.