For the past two years I’ve been trying to keep good records and hear my cardiologist’s words, “See you in six months,” I’ve been trying to get back into my exercise routine, so when the weather is nice, I’ve been walking around 5 a.m. two to three times a week, from our home in Stowe St. to the Third St. Bridge and back. On the route I’ve mapped out, and walk most of the time (with the occasional change), the walk is about 5.2 miles and takes about an hour to complete. I have a treadmill, but prefer to run outside. It makes me feel like starting somewhere and actually going a distance to a place, and then returning to where I started. When I run on the treadmill, I feel like I’m walking in my wheels while walking because I’m not really going anywhere.
As I walk downtown, I remember what used to be, including clothing, shoes and jewelry, five-and-a-half stores, banks, bakeries/coffee shops, drug stores, restaurants, and where a few full-service gas stations were downtown Jamestown .
When I think of those gas stations and their locations, I try to remember the much lower gas costs we paid back then (I started driving in 1969), and the periodic “gas wars” especially on East 2nd St, sometimes as low as .16/gallon every now and then. However, we went through a short period of time where we could only buy gas based on our license plate and date. Boards ending odd could only be purchased on odd days of the month and vice versa.
My thoughts sometimes lead me to comparing the costs between then and now, I think of the feelings of many, that gas prices could be the product of the person who works in the Oval Office today.
It seems some feel that a president sets the price of gas. It comes out especially loud and clear when there is a change in the political leanings of the person in the Oval Office. Then the fingers begin to point with full force.
In 1964, a released song sung by Shirley Ellis entitled “The Name Game” made a splash and was a favorite to sing along to the 45 vinyl disc played on our record players, the clock radios in our bedrooms, car radios like Daddy Us perhaps listened to our stations on the car stereo, or through the one earpiece that came with our transistor radios that provided the music of our generation.
Considering who is responsible for rising prices, I think we could use the tune from Ellis’ hit song, but rewrite the lyrics and call it The Blame Game.”
We live in a different time than when we were children, even young adults. When prices rise, we feel the need to blame someone for it. Food prices have risen. The prices of new houses have risen enormously. Car prices have skyrocketed to where some new vehicles have nearly doubled, or even exceeded, double what Sally and I paid for our house in 1984. If you look at the Game Show Network and see when someone won a car in the 1970s, the average cost of a new car was about $3542.00 while gas averaged about 0.36 a gallon. Average salaries and hourly wages (minimum wage in the 1970s was about $1.25 per hour) were also much lower then, as were the costs of homes, food, clothing, entertainment, and everything else at the time. The ratio of salary to job wages compared to the cost of living then, compared to today, may not be as proportional as we may think today.
There are many reasons for the rise in the cost of living over the past 50 years. It’s a domino effect. The cost of manufacturing goods has risen, growing and growing food costs more, the demand for goods and entertainment has risen significantly. The technological advancement, also known as the computer age, has created new ways to teach students, our demand for computers, smartphones and watches, medical equipment used today, the desire for bigger television screens, drones, new ways of cooking have many of the rising cost of living. The list goes on. We want these items, and in many cases we need them to survive in today’s world. Look at all the ways we can only use our mobile devices to go to a concert, a ball game, or a movie, as opposed to the paper tickets we used to be able to use, and the list goes on.
If the blame must be placed somewhere, it cannot be placed with one person. It is the result of many things. It is supply and demand, the cost of production, growing/growing food, the increase in salaries/wages in the cost of living that have brought us to where we are today. If the blame is to be placed, it must be placed on all of us, whether out of necessity or desire. It is not the fault of any person, no matter what political party they belong to.
A saying I often used in school was: “If you point one finger (blame) at someone else, three fingers are still pointing at you.” Something to think about?
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