Holiday entertaining made easy with this serving supplies checklist
Make sure you have everything you need for your holiday feast by matching your cooking utensils and dishes in advance.
“Old Grocery Prices Are No Fun Now” was the title of an article that appeared on the front page of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette on November 19, 1974. This 50-year-old “Thanksgiving Story” by Mike Staton caught this writer’s attention and he had to share it. Shoppers today certainly complain about grocery prices, just as Mrs. Ellen Fleming did 50 years ago.
Mrs. Fleming lived at 659 King Street and often visited Dick Binninger’s IGA at 518 E. Main St. because it was nearby. Before this shopping trip, she found “an old grocery list/receipt from around 1910, wrinkled and yellowed, left in a book in the attic.” I used it as a bookmark, but it was forgotten.
It showed what I bought on my trip to the grocery store: 3 pounds. Coffee 63 cents, 2 pounds of butter 72 cents, a potato 15 cents, a linso 10 cents, algo starch 10 cents, 3 pounds. Salt 10 cents, lettuce 7 cents, 2 bars of Fels naphtha soap 10 cents, 2 bars of ivory soap 11 cents, 2 bars of toilet paper 10 cents. The cost of groceries totaled $2.55 when some items were purchased multiple times.
Mr. Binninger, just for “fun”, found identical or similar items on the shelves and totaled them at the then “current” 1974 prices. His total was $10.81.
Interestingly, the story ends with Mrs. Fleming’s words that although economic conditions in 1974 were bad for her, she believed that “the struggle for life would never be as turbulent as it was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
Some Lancaster readers may remember Dick Binninger’s grocery store at 518 E. Main St., but fewer readers will remember that his first grocery store was located at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Maple Street. He opened there in 1946 and then added and renovated the building in 1957.
Meanwhile, Johnny Showalter Motors purchased property at 518 East Main Street in 1952 and opened a new “Automotive Sales and Service Center” in that location. After 33 years in business, Showalter closed its doors in 1962 and Dick Binninger purchased the building.
Binninger renovated the “new” building and opened the “new giant IGA Foodliner” on June 27, 1962. It has been described as “three times the size of the market he has been in for the past 16 and a half years”. Four years later, he added a 2,500-square-foot addition to the back and purchased land to the east for a large parking lot.
Dick Binninger retired in 1975 and the grocery store was sold to Paul Hickman and John Little. It operated as “John’s Market” until 1982, when the grocery store’s inventory and equipment was sold at auction. The building returned to the automotive business in 1985 and became “Murray’s Auto Parts.” Today, it’s NAPA Auto Parts, but passersby would have no idea that 63 years ago, it was Lancaster’s “newest, biggest and best” grocery store.
As a “fun”, readers can go to the grocery store and add the prices of items similar to those that Binninger totaled in 1974 to today’s shelves to see what the total price would be today.
