My husband, Jack, is a Cabinet Maker, or Woodworker, or Carpenter. Call it what you will, he works with wood. He is retired, but has done “side work” from time to time since I have been married to him (about six years). He repairs cabinet doors, drawers, and bread boards for some old apartments in El Cajon. He does the work here at our home, out in his work area in front of the garage.
He has not been doing much of that kind of work for a few years, but just picked up a few items to repair last week. We were talking about those particular apartments as we are thinking how unusual it is for more modern apartments to have built in bread boards.
“How old do you think those apartments are,” I asked him.
“Oh, I’m sure they’re at least fifty years old,” he replied.
“That would mean they were built in the fifties, or sixties, “ I told him.
“They are all two-bedroom units,” he said, “one bathroom, a kitchen, a dining area, a living room, a hall. That’s all. And they rent for I think about eight hundred a month.”
“Typical size rental units for back then,” I said. “But I bet when they were new, they rented for about sixty dollars a month.”
We discussed how “low” rent was when we rented houses and apartments in the sixties in different places. (As it happens, both of us with our former spouses rented on the same street in Spring Valley back in the sixties, even though we didn't know each other.) We agreed that two bedroom units rented for sixty to eighty dollars a month. Some even put down payments on houses and their payments were less than a hundred dollars a month; they were, in fact, about the same as rent.
Food has increased in price, too. Imagine milk in a (ten-quart) “cowtainer” for $2.10. That’s what it was in San Diego in 1969. That’s eighty-four cents a gallon.
When Dave and I moved to Alaska in 1969, we bought gas at a bulk plant in Los Angeles for twenty-one cents a gallon. But even in the highest priced gas stations it was about thirty cents a gallon in those days.
Before we moved to Alaska, our weekly grocery budget was thirty-five dollars. That was generous, too; I didn’t have to be careful or frugal. I bought lots of meat, even really nice steaks and roasts. We dined out (not fast foods because there were very few of them then) usually once or twice a week.
I have to say wages were lower in those days, too. My first job at Goodyear Tire & Rubber in Los Angeles as a Clerk Typist garnered $350 a month. Dave’s high construction wages were $5 an hour. Had he worked all year long (he didn’t) we would have earned $14,620 in combined wages in a year. That was about the price of a house in those days. A new car with all the bells and whistles could be had for four or five thousand dollars, unless you bought a Cadillac. That would be maybe six or seven thousand. Of course any of those cars would only get about seven miles to a gallon of gas, but who cares if gas is less than thirty cents a gallon? You can fill the tank for six or seven dollars.
In the big cities it was easy to get a job. Besides at Goodyear, I worked in a lock factory assembling doorknobs, at American Honda Motor Company as a secretary, at HITCO (a fiberglass company) in research and development in the first five years I was married to Dave Goins. It seemed to me anyone who really wanted to work could find a job. I don’t think I knew anyone who couldn’t find a job if they wanted to work.
It’s a different world today, isn’t it?
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