Saturday, November 12, 2016

Cranberry Harvest

Up the street from where I live here on Cape Cod I noticed that they have flooded this cranberry bog to harvest the cranberry crop for this year. Right next to the Cape Rail Trail (a bike path) on Depot street in Dennisport; this crop will be just in time for Thanksgiving.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Snicker Time

I just celebrated another birthday recently and like many of us I suspect birthdays are a time to reflect over the past year and recent trip around the Sun and reminisce about past years and how things were back then compared to the present day.  For example, believe it or not back in 1969 I put the top pictured "Snicker bar " into a vacuum sealed air-tight bag and left it at the bottom of my parent's freezer that we keep down in the basement. Being from a family of 5 kids, my parents would stock up on meat specials to stretch their "grocery dollars". Lo and behold this freezer finally "conked out" and I found this Snicker bar at the bottom of the freezer in amazingly good shape.

I brought this Snickers bar back to my home on the Cape and have stored it recently in my refrigerator. I believe back in 1969 this Snickers bar cost twenty-five cents and would sure last me a long time. By comparison, I just bought the other Snickers bar today at the local "7-Eleven for $1.39. "What an example of how prices and size of the same product have changed over the years! " The current Snickers bar is way smaller and costs way more!

I remember back in 1969 as well working for Culbro Tobacco which grows shade tobacco for cigar wrappers at $1.25 per hour during the Summer in Simsbury, Connecticut,  Bill DeMallie and I as a picking team back then would average about $160.00 per week though as we were the only two local pickers and we earned extra money for our picking production (Piece work).  Now the minimum wage is $10.00 per hour and scheduled to increase to $11.00 per hour on January 1st, 2017. Although the wages are higher now; it is not how much you are paid that is most important but rather what the "purchasing power" of your income you can attain. These two Snickers bars do show how price and size of the same product have changed over the years.