The Second Hand Man
February 26th, 1969

A lot of the stuff tastes different to me (It might be that my smokingaffected my taste buds, but I honestly believe that a lot of foodstuffs tastequite different now from what they will in the future - much better too.Breakfast cereals, candy bars, jelly (You can actually taste the real fruitflavor in them), bread, eggs, meat pies. The milk is fantastic; you need toshake the bottle before you open it because of the thick layer of cream thatforms on top. We only use butter on our bread (Margarine still has to make aname for itself). The soft drinks especially taste better. No cans - all glassbottles. Only beer is available in cans, but they got no pull rings - a specialbeer can opener with a triangular tapered point is needed to puncture the can.And although Tupperware parties are a big thing, I am amazed at how few itemson the shelves are packaged in plastic. Plastic, unfortunately, is still toplace its great big ugly footprint on the planet. The largest soft drinkavailable is the family size. And there are no diet soft drinks either. Not tomention, low fat milk and fifty different flavors of yogurt. No long life milkand, oh yes, there are no hypermarkets from which to purchase these items. Thesmaller stores are still to be put out of business by the coming age of theMega-One-Stop-Meccas.

It is extremely frustrating going to the store with my mother and thenwaiting for the teller to ring up each item. Most items at stores are stillindividually priced due to the fact that bar codes will only be making theirdebut in the seventies. I recall that the very first UPC item ever marked andscanned for sale was a packet of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit. I believethe item is, or at least will be later, on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Its taking me some getting used to the price of things and the value ofmoney. A million dollars is still a lot of money now. I reckon that the averageAmerican’s salary is between 5k and 5.5k - and I’m referring to annual.

Anyhow, you get a lot more for your dollar now. I’ve also noticed thatpeople are still human back here; a lot more honest, helpful and caring.

That is, everyone except lawyersand used-car salesmen of course!!!