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Once upon a time Banquet Chicken Pot Pies cost 35 cents each.
This fact is impressed firmly on my memory because an ATM broke down one Friday afternoon. This would be no big deal today, but back then ATMs weren't networked. You went to your bank's or you didn't go. Not only that, but the tellers closed up shop at 3:00. So if, for example, you arrived at the bank at 3:30 on a Friday and found that the ATM had already broken down you knew you were in for a long weekend with only whatever cash you happened to have on you. Which, presumably, wasn't much or you wouldn't have gone to the ATM in the first place.
At this time I didn't know any grocery stores or restaurants that took credit cards, either. I didn't know why this was. One of my fellow students had told me there was a law against those places taking credit cards. I don't know, maybe there was.
So there I was, with $1.52 in coins in my pocket, standing in front of a busted ATM on Friday afternoon and wondering what I was going to eat for the rest of the weekend. I walked to the grocery store and bought a dozen small eggs and a Banquet Chicken Pot Pie.
I boiled the eggs in my hot pot. For Sunday dinner, as a treat, I baked the pot pie in my toaster oven. I wasn't supposed to have any cooking equipment in the third floor attic apartment I rented in that big drafty old firetrap of a house, but I could do that much.
It was at about that time that I bought my first color TV set, a 13 inch model from RCA. At $348 it was a ridiculous extravagance for a poor grad student, but I enjoyed it.
I guess I got my money's worth out of that thing. For many years it was my only TV. When I got a bigger, cheaper one, I retired the RCA to my mom's cottage in the Upper Peninsula.
With the cruel wear of years, the folks don't get up to the cottage any more. And the old TV set has become obsolete. It can't pick up modern signals. Sometimes I feel like that myself.
This week I finally replaced it with a new, digital set. I put the old set out along the roadside for the trash collector. I couldn't look to see whether he actually took it, or whether somebody else came by and took it away before the truck came.
Banquet Chicken Pot Pies now cost $1.00, if you can find them on sale. With antenna and accessories the new 19 inch, flat screen, high definition digital TV cost $348.
This fact is impressed firmly on my memory because an ATM broke down one Friday afternoon. This would be no big deal today, but back then ATMs weren't networked. You went to your bank's or you didn't go. Not only that, but the tellers closed up shop at 3:00. So if, for example, you arrived at the bank at 3:30 on a Friday and found that the ATM had already broken down you knew you were in for a long weekend with only whatever cash you happened to have on you. Which, presumably, wasn't much or you wouldn't have gone to the ATM in the first place.
At this time I didn't know any grocery stores or restaurants that took credit cards, either. I didn't know why this was. One of my fellow students had told me there was a law against those places taking credit cards. I don't know, maybe there was.
So there I was, with $1.52 in coins in my pocket, standing in front of a busted ATM on Friday afternoon and wondering what I was going to eat for the rest of the weekend. I walked to the grocery store and bought a dozen small eggs and a Banquet Chicken Pot Pie.
I boiled the eggs in my hot pot. For Sunday dinner, as a treat, I baked the pot pie in my toaster oven. I wasn't supposed to have any cooking equipment in the third floor attic apartment I rented in that big drafty old firetrap of a house, but I could do that much.
It was at about that time that I bought my first color TV set, a 13 inch model from RCA. At $348 it was a ridiculous extravagance for a poor grad student, but I enjoyed it.
I guess I got my money's worth out of that thing. For many years it was my only TV. When I got a bigger, cheaper one, I retired the RCA to my mom's cottage in the Upper Peninsula.
With the cruel wear of years, the folks don't get up to the cottage any more. And the old TV set has become obsolete. It can't pick up modern signals. Sometimes I feel like that myself.
This week I finally replaced it with a new, digital set. I put the old set out along the roadside for the trash collector. I couldn't look to see whether he actually took it, or whether somebody else came by and took it away before the truck came.
Banquet Chicken Pot Pies now cost $1.00, if you can find them on sale. With antenna and accessories the new 19 inch, flat screen, high definition digital TV cost $348.
