If Patrick, Leslie or Amy is/was your great grandparent, you may or may not find the following easy to believe. While I’m sure you have observed the continual escalation of prices for goods and services, it only takes on important meaning after you’ve been around long enough to see just how much the purchasing power of the dollar changes over time. In my own experience, I didn’t pay much attention to money matters until I was in my thirties, and was struck by the increase in property values. The following may help illustrate this point.
I’ll start this with news about 1949, when I enrolled at Morris Harvey College, in Charleston, West Virginia, as a freshman. The tuition? $156.00 per semester. (Morris Harvey was a private, liberal arts college and could set its own tuition rates; all colleges within the West Virginia State College System charged a whopping $40.00 per semester.) While in school I worked on Saturdays as well as playing in local dance bands, and worked at summer jobs, all of which to get through school. (I lived at home and rode a public bus to school daily — from home and back for 20 cents.) One job was to report to a men’s clothing store on Saturday morning, and demonstrate a Sunbeam electric razor to customers who were browsing. I worked from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and earned $10.00 for the day. Then I’d play a three-hour dance job with a local jazz group, and was paid the union wage of $8.00 for three hours. Most weekends I played both Friday and Saturday nights.
The federal minimum wage in 1950 was $0.75 per hour. That’s what I earned working at the Union Carbide plant during the summers, and that came to $30.00 per week, minus taxes. That, plus my earnings during the school year, pretty well paid for my college degree.
During those years I was in the 425th Army Reserve Band, which met weekly, and had active duty for two weeks every summer. I received regular army wages — prorated, of course, which were paid every three months and amounted to something like thirty-five dollars.
Then we go from there . . .
As I said elsewhere, I paid $2,100 for my first car, a full-size sedan. That was in 1953. I remember that, earlier, when I was about nine, Chevys and Fords cost around $800.00.
My first annual salary as a school teacher was $2,700. That’s annual. At that time in West Virginia, there was a state salary schedule for classroom teachers, which local school systems could exceed but had to meet the schedule as a minimum.
The schedule called for an annual monthly increase of ten dollars each year for twelve years. As a band director, I was paid an extra thirty dollars monthly for extra duty: ball games, concerts, etc. We received nine monthly paychecks a year, so I either had to get a summer job (not easy) or save during the year to make it through the summer months. Of course, I continued to play in dance bands — the pay had gone up to $12.00 for a three-hour job. I worked with another summer employee who was a full-time student at West Virginia University. He said he could pay for a year’s schooling, including tuition, books, fees, food and lodging for about one thousand dollars.
I started a Master’s degree program at Ohio State in the summer of 1956, but I don’t remember the cost. In 1957 I decided to go to Teachers College, Columbia University, so I started over on the M.A. At Columbia, the tuition was outrageous: $30.00 per credit hour. That fall, Carol and I were wed, and I continued my summer program at Columbia, finishing in 1959. How did we do it? The local Bank of St. Albans had a program for school teachers: one could borrow $1,000 to get through the summer, then pay it back at an easy rate during the school year. That one thousand dollars paid for my second and third summers’ school costs.
I won’t take this piece much farther, but here are a few other tidbits about money.
In 1963 I changed jobs and we moved from St. Albans to Salem, Virginia. In order to do so I cashed my retirement contribution to the West Virginia retirement system. Total contribution during ten years: $1,800. That’s a hundred and eighty dollars a year — twenty dollars a month for nine months. That eighteen hundred paid for the following: the moving van, which we shared with our friends the Parsells who moved with us; a second car — a used ’56 Oldsmobile; Carol’s hospital costs for giving birth to Leslie; and a down payment on a house the following spring (the house, on Youngwood Drive, cost about $15,000). We could buy three pounds of hamburger or sausage for one dollar. I could buy a pack of cigarettes (I was a smoker back then), a loaf of bread and a quart of milk for a quarter each. The hospital bill for Amy’s birth (1967), was about $500 — paid in full by insurance. Our mortgage payment was about $160 per month. My salary in 1963, based on 10 years’ experience and a Master’s degree, was about $6,000.
Not able to be among you, which I regret, I haven’t even speculated about what your cost of living might be as you read this, but I’m sure you’ll find that whatever you earn, it is just a living. It was that way with us; with Carol’s uncanny family finance skills, we always had enough to get along, with a little extra for emergencies or good times. And from age 11, when my Dad cajoled me to cut neighbors lawns for 25 cents, until I retired at age 65, there was never a time that I didn’t work for wages, so yes, I was and am today conscious of “the dollar” aspect of life in our times.