Cost of a Burger.

Typical Saturday in the late 40s: Hamburger , thirty cents, milkshake to go, thirty cents, candy 5 cents a bar, then head to a double feature movie with a cartoon, a short subject and a news reel: 12 cents!! One screen, of course.

The burgers were huge, loaded and of course made on the spot, the milkshakes were huge also and I don't remember ANY candy more than a nickel; gas ran anywhere from 15 cents to 24 cents.

Nobody was let in with sunflower seeds---except me!!! I had to prove to the usher-owner that I ate the whole seeds and didn't spit any on the floor!! I guess they stuck to the floor. OOOOO---special!!

Oh yeah--single scoop ice cream--5 cents. Double--10 cents.

 

I remember going to the general store down the road from my grandmother's house in Woodville Massachusetts and looking at all the 'penny candy' behind the glass.
The storekeeper, Mr Wheeler, stood there with a small, brown paper bag in his big hands, watching me with a playful twinkle in his eyes.
But what a decision I had to make! The dime clutched in my small fist would fill that bag with so much!
Half would go for a candy necklace; that went without saying. Beyond that, there were an awful lot of good things. The peanut butter kisses, licorice whips in red or black, dots of candy on strips of paper like cash register receipts, peppermint sticks, caramels, soft caramel with white filling (my dad called them 'cow eyes', bit o honey, chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, Hershey's kisses (2 for a penny), wax soda bottles filled with multicolored sweet liquid, pixy stix (paper straws filled with a powder both sweet and tart), red hot candy coins, double bubble bubble gum, oh, and many more.
I bet you can remember some I've forgotten.
Back on the subject of hamburgers, 15 cents would get you one at McDonald's!

 

Oh yeah--I remember all those. I never took a chance on those little wax bottles tho. At one point , I could get clove liquid in a little container with toothpicks to dip in the clove. Also , remember Blackjack , Beemans and Clove gum?? I think those have been brought back.

I remember when McDonalds first started---man, what pathetic little pieces of nothing!

 

I loved Blackjack gum! Don't know if it's still around.
We would put a piece over a couple of our front teeth so it looked like we had missing teeth.
Know what else wss fun? My kids and I would get a roll of Wintergreen life savers and go into our windowless bathroom.
Chewing the candy with our mouths open, we could see the sparks this causes in the mirror!
Good times.

 

My dad described them first 10 cent things as a piece off cardboard between not fit to eat bread buns. Lucky for us kids the closest one to the farm was over 100 miles, a BIG trip in the late '50's.

 

@scratcho, that sounds fantastic!

I only eat burgers from one place, they're meat-less, and they cost an arm and a leg but they're delicious. The meat-less burger is called "beyond" burger, and I think Carl's Jr. has them too. I get them from a place called the Yard House (named such for its ginormous beers - the yard-tall beer glass).

Yard House beyond burger is just impossibly good.

 

I remember Necco wafers. I used to save the chocolate ones for
last, and started with the yellow or green ones.
At Halloween there were short versions of those, remember?

 

You can get them here, Brother!
Necco Wafers | SpanglerCandy.com.

There is also a list of stores. In which you can find them.

 

Yo are quite welcome, Brother. Enjoy!

 

when you buy hamburger meat at the grocery store and take it home and cook it,
and when you buy a "hamburger" at any fast food place,
i don't care how many hairs people split over how much soy powder, and ghod knows what else they're allowed to put in it,
these are two completely different things.
they don't, to me, taste like any sort of the same kinds of things at all.
and why do so many people what to spoil a perfectly good piece of dead cow, with a slice of spoiled milk?
i mean, ok, its not such a perfectly good, whatever that thing is that's called the meat in it,
but cheese, how did that ever get started and why?
bacon, yes, avacado, yes, tomatoes, dill pickles, peperoncini, mayo or some concoction of mayo and werstishire or whatever, all those fine, but why oh why oh why, cheese?

oh the chocklet neccos, yes please. also jr mints.
the licorice flavored neccos were ok too.

oh and you know you can get sunflower seeds without the shells, both salted and unsalted at tj's. not sure trader joes exists outside of the western u.s. though.

 

Ahhh - but the plastic squares you get in the US that they refer to as cheese - is disgusting muck, you need to come this side of the pond and get some 'real' Cheddar cheese and you will understand then why burgers and cheese DO go together !!!

 

i think at least part of the "fat and lazy" comes from "civilization" having become so isolated from nature.
i believe that was a major factor of all the ancient ones that "collapsed" and "disappeared".

at any rate, before everything was a franchise, at little mom and pop "greasy spoons" (which most of them really weren't any less sanitary then franchises now,
that was just a nick name for comparing them to more expensive eating places), you could actually get a hamburger that was ALL meat, and didn't have to be over cooked either.

even better was the hot roast beef sandwedge at hart's. it was open faced, smothered in gravy, and came with mash that also were, and a hot vegie item, all for less then a buck, this was in the 50s. the only thing extra was something to drink, and something for desert. coffee with was a nickle, and deserts were all less then 50 cents too.

when the hoffbrau franchise started these were similar prices too. and both were a couple of blocks from the bus station which was a couple of blocks or so from the train station.

that was in sacramento which was about 50 miles from colfax on the train or the bus to get there.
locally in colfax we had lil's and the little red hen. i don't remember there being franchise places until the mid to late 60s. the first i remember was possibly a fosters and then an a&w.

 

Ahwww, those were the days.