By Steve Walker
Many times us old folks
get nostalgic and yearn for the “good old days.” We reference those memories as the good times
when life seemed easier and less complicated and much less expensive. For some
of us the good old days were over 50 years ago which would seem to be for the
younger generation as the distant past or ancient history. We sometimes even
refer to ourselves as “Dinosaurs.”
For some of us older generation
types it seems like only yesterday. Having grown up in the 50s and 60s my contemporaries
have experienced a radical change in lifestyle and skyrocketing prices for the
things we took for granted “back in the day.”
Let me offer two examples.
Today when you go to the movies the tickets cost approximately $7.50 per
ticket. If you take someone with you, you are talking 15 dollars just to get
in. Popcorn is around 5 dollars a bucket; drinks could cost three dollars each
which can add up to 25 or more an outing. If you are a senior citizen you might
get a dollar discount with proof of age. Imagine having to prove you are old
for a dollar discount. Back then you had to prove you were younger than 12 to
get a discount. Needless to say, “I am a Baby Boomer!”
Second example is the
current price of taking the VIA bus. A one way bus ticket downtown now is over
a dollar. When I attended St. Gregory’s Catholic
School in the fifties in Balcones Heights
As a seventh and eighth
grader my mother would give me a dollar to take the bus to go downtown on a
Saturday and spend the entire day going to one of the three theatres at that
time that included the Majestic, the Texas and the Empire. I could take the VIA
bus for 20 cents round trip, watch a double feature for a quarter, buy popcorn
for less than 15 cents, a coca cola for a nickel and come home at the end of
the day, sometimes with a few cents in my pocket. Usually the double features
included at least one monster movie like Dracula or Frankenstein horror flick. Those
were the days!
If I chose to hang out
downtown after the movie I could walk around the downtown streets with no fear
of bad things happening. I was also known on occasion to walk over to
Woolworth’s and sit at the fountain and order a tuna sandwich and drink with my
leftover money.
S. H. Kress & Company,
Neisner Brothers or even Walgreen’s Drug Store were also options.
If I was just killing time,
I would wander up the street to Joske’s affectionately referred to as Saint
Joske’s. We called it that due to its close proximity to Saint Joseph E. Commerce Street
My Saturdays were exciting
as I took many a “field trip” by myself or sometimes with one of my younger
brothers to the downtown area. Yep for me and many of my generation, those were
the good old days. Now that I am into senior status, perhaps I should be
referring to them as those “good young days!!”
Anyway, as always, what I
write is “Just a Thought.”
Steve Walker is a Vietnam
Veteran and former Justice of the Peace and Journalist.
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