Do You Remember When...........

[Eric Krewson]

To this day I remember how excited I would get when the new Herter's catalog came in the mail when I was a kid. I also remember when my total order from them would be less than a dollar for an assortment of hooks, sinkers and lures. Everything in the catalog was advertised as "World Famous or Professional", how could a kid go wrong with this stuff.

[Biggie Hoffman]

The 1st set of a dozen cedars arrows I built cost me $7 including field points.

[Biggie Hoffman]

Heres a scan of a page from Archery Magazine 1960 I'll put a clickable thumnail here. Hope you can read it.

 

[Caddo]

I can remember when we had a "Milk Box" outside the back door. The Watkin's man and the Fuller Brush salesmen would come by. We all had .22rifles and/or shotguns in the back window of the pick-up. Stopped on the way to school and after school to hunt a little. I think there probably was a class or two that inadvertantly got skipped to go hunting. Making hay and Deer hunting were acceptable excuses for missing school. Still remember my Grandmothers phone number out at the farm, two longs and a short!

LD

[Stu]

OK, I'll join as my first Bear laminated glass bow was in '63 or '64. Never could afford the higher-end models back then.

I used a Baker knock-off stand (Big Buck) for years. Twice it fell off my feet and clattered to the ground. I used a climbing strap, just let it go, shimmied down and shimmied back up with it. Finally got rid of it last year. But I did at least always have a climbing strap looped over my wrists. 56 years old, I still use it (though with a climbing harness attached + a Summit Prussik knot thing, too).

Jobs? My first one paid $1.08/hour. My fondest memory regarding the relationship between work + income was in Albuquerque. I was an apprentice painter on a large crew. I eventually replaced Carlitos, who was the only lazy one on the crew. I was making $2.25 an hour, paying child support, paying rent, and basically starving while working my tail off. I finally got up the courage to ask my boss, Pablo, for a raise to somewhere near the $3.50+ Carlitos was making. He said "Well, you are doing a good job. Tell you what, I'll give you 10 cents an hour more now, and if it works out, 5 cents on top of that in six months." After taxes, that bought me about one six pack of beer a week and a sack of potatoes. Good thing potatoes were cheap, one week that's all I ate, every meal.  

I finally moved back to MI and after much work found my first "good job": $525 a month!! I was so happy to have work I didn't even ask what I was being paid, found out with the first paycheck.

But I'm not sure times have changed, just the prices. Ask guys making minimum wage now, probably seems about the same.