The Good Old Days (Cigar Smoke 3-27-08)

I bet you were really hoping that I would write something nostalgic about my past. Hey, your hopes are my marching orders. “I don’t know, but I been told, Laris is still writing, cause he ain’t cold.” Yet.

Now that gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon, I was remembering when I was a 16-year-old kid and I would get gas for 17 cents a gallon. Yes, 17 cents. I would fill up my 15-gallon tank for $2.55. Yes, $2.55. Ah, the good old days.

I would drive my old 1949 Ford with a dropped-in but not-bolted-down Merc engine and no carpeting or floor linings. Just a metal floor where you could see the road through the holes. And the fumes would waft up into the car and we would breathe in those wafty fumes and we liked it like that.

But then, just when we were enjoying our wafting fumes, gas prices shot up to 19 cents a gallon. We couldn’t believe it. We were outraged. We were shocked. We were Ray Stevens-incensed. I’m not kidding. We were really ticked off. I remember hunting for another station that sold it for 17 cents. But alas, there were none. It was 19 cents or stop driving. I paid the price.

And right around that time I was in the habit of eating hamburgers at a place fittingly called Hamburger Handout. They were great little burgers all greased up and ready to go. And they cost 19 cents each. We’d buy a few of those suckers and some fries and Cokes and get change back from our $2 and we’d take those handed-out burgers back to the car to flavor them with some wafted gas fumes, and life was good.

But as I would soon learn, life would not stay good. Another restaurant opened up nearby. Maybe you’ve heard of it. McDonald’s. Yes, McDonald’s opened up one of their first restaurants in Westchester on La Tijera, just up the hill from the Hamburger Handout.

Well, some buddies of mine talked me into going over there and trying out one of these new hamburgers. And I had them help me jump-start my Ford and we all went to McDonald’s. For the first time.

And you know what? Here’s what. Their hamburger cost 21 cents! We were outraged. We were shocked. Ray Stevens would have thrown up. But we were there and we were hearing all these great things about this new kind of hamburger place and so we bought one hamburger to check it out. We didn’t buy any fries or drinks. Nothing else. Just one damn burger.

And you know what? My friends actually liked it. They turned over the top bun and saw that pickle lying in that splotch of ketchup and they liked it. I kind of liked it too, but I said I would never go back because I could get a Hamburger Handout hamburger for two cents less and it had onions and lettuce and some other goop on it.

And then I made a pronouncement. I remember saying that McDonald’s would never make it. It was just a matter of time before they would go under. Nobody would pay two cents more for a hamburger. Nobody.

And you know what happened? Hamburger Handout went out of business within three months. McDonald’s hadn’t even sold its one-millionth hamburger yet. Yep, I still can’t figure it out. Fifty years later and I still can’t figure it out. If I would have put my money in McDonald’s I would now have $6 billion and could get a car with carpeting.

Ah, but we liked being poor back then. We liked figuring out how to save two cents on gas and burgers. We were so poor that they hadn’t invented dirt yet. So at least we weren’t dirt poor. All they had back then was bedrock, so we had to take little pick- axes and break up the bedrock so we could play in the dirt. But we liked it like that.

And not only gas and hamburgers were cheap. I remember driving up Highway 101 to go to Humboldt State College in 1960 and I stopped at a Motel 6. And yes, Virginia, at that time you could stay at a Motel 6 for, you guessed it, $6. You’d give the clerk a 10, and he’d give you four bucks back. Enough for dinner and a tank of gas and a dirty magazine.

But then another motel chain opened up another motel and it was called, I think, Motel 8. Now, you could get a better room (I guess they washed the roaches) for two bucks more. I don’t know. It makes me nervous just remembering it. I’m not proud of this, but I once stayed in a hotel in Hawaii a few years ago for $365. (The roaches were spotless.) Yes —do the math — I could have stayed at a Motel 6 for 60 days.

But back then we were so poor we didn’t even have water. No, I don’t mean we didn’t have access to water. They had not invented water yet. We had H and O. Yes, all we got was some sticky, globby stuff. But then finally some smart guy gave us two Hs and the rest was history. H-2-0. Oh, how we loved water. It’s probably my favorite invention. Not counting TiVo.

One last nostalgic memory (what other kind are there?) and then you can get back to your crying about $4 gas prices. I remember my mom dropping my sister and me off at the show in 1947. Yes, 1947. I was 6. Most of you were 0.

She dropped us off at a theater in Lomita. And she gave us each a quarter. The movies cost nine cents to get in. And then we had 16 cents for candy. And we stayed there all day. Eight hours. And we saw “Clutching Hand” serials and “MovieTone News” and “Flash Gordon” and 100 cartoons. And we would count down the 100 cartoons. 100, 99, 98, etc. And if they didn’t show us all 100, we would be Ray Stevens incensed even before Ray Stevens was born. And we would clap and stomp and roar and spit JuJuBees at girls and ushers.

And we liked it like that.



Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.