Have you bought a candy bar lately? They range in price from slightly more than $1 to more than $1.50. I remember when candy bars were five cents. Figure out the percent of inflation! Oh, you tell me there are two of them in the package. Well, one of the bars now days does not equal one bar from the past.

Packaging is everything these days. We are getting less of almost everything that we buy.

The price is just a little more than it used to be, but the size of the package means you are getting less for the same amount of money.

My husband and I got to talking about how things used to be. We both remembered penny candy. Don said that at that time he did not even have a penny to spare for a treat. The treats may as well have cost a $1!

I remember how excited I got when I found a penny along my path. Of course, I picked it up. Found money was important. That meant I could afford a treat.

Wicks’ ice cream shop on Park Avenue had penny candy. I was allowed to pick a treat when we stopped for ice cream. There were all kinds of candy. My favorites were the peach pits. They were a hard candy shaped like a peach pit that tasted like peaches. I also liked the licorice buttons. Mrs. Wicks would put my treats into a tiny bag and I was off. There were also fireballs, root beer barrels, pieces of salt water taffy and wax bottles filled with juice. If I had a nickel, I could buy a Clark bar. They were always my favorites.

Today, the Butterfinger is similar to the Clark bar. I like those too. My daughter-in-law especially likes Butterfingers. She usually has a stash of them to snack on.

The other thing we bought were popsicles. At that time, you got two pieces of an icy treat if you broke it in half. We usually shared a popsicle. That meant whoever I went to the store with, we had to agree on a flavor.

Don told me he always liked the orange. I liked root beer and banana the best. Guess it is a good thing that we did not have to agree on a flavor!

At any rate to be able to buy one was a treat. We were very careful with our money. We did not have any extra money to waste.

Someone posted that they remembered the minimum wage being $2.65. That was a fortune.

When I started working the rate was $.50 an hour. I was overjoyed when it went to $1.00. That was quite a bit later. It did not matter what the hourly wage was, we were happy to have some spending money of our own. I was also happy to get the store discount on my purchases. That meant I could get some clothes that were in style. It also meant the I could buy a bowl of chili for a quarter at West Drug for my lunch. I ate there before I went to work.

We did not know we were poor. That is just the way things were. We never took what we had for granted. We learned economics the hard way.

We learned to save our money for a future purchase. I remember when I had enough money to purchase a transistor radio. I enjoyed that radio so much. I could take it to the beach with me. My mother and I shopped around before I finally made my purchase. I got the best deal possible. Youngsters today would have no idea what a transistor radio was. They get their music over their phones that cost a lot more than they used to.

When we attended band concerts, we roamed all over looking for deposit bottles. If we turned the bottles in, we got money for them. That is how I purchased many of the treats that I enjoyed while listening to the concert. The stand was happy to pay us for the bottles, because they made a deposit on them. They washed the bottles and refilled them. That saved a lot of waste. There were no tin pop cans at that time. All pop came in returnable bottles. If they returned to that policy, it would cut down on what goes into the landfill. But people are too “busy” to return bottles these days. They would never return them even for a nickel a piece.

New York has banned the use of plastic bags. I commend them for that. I do not just dispose of my plastic bags. I have been a recycler for years. I use them over, then get rid of them. You have to remember to take your own bags into the store or buy paper ones.

I titled this “Inflation” but it is about more than inflation. It is about how frugal I was when I grew up. Those habits are hard to break.

Hope I have jogged your memories. I am sure many of you grew up the same way I did.

Ann Swanson writes from her home in Russell. Contact at hickoryheights1@verizon.net