Can’t get much for a dime anymore

It hit me like a cup of ice in the face recently. Things cost a lot more than they used to.

Saturday was a warm day and I was at the Barbecue and Bluegrass festival, so I bought a snow cone. A cherry one. Sugar free. It was good. I paid $2 for it.

Two bucks for a little cup of ice and some flavored syrup? If I figured up the markup on that, it would probably raise my temperature.

Why I can remember — here’s where I go into geezer mode — when a snow cone cost a dime!

A teenage boy of driving age usually outfitted the trunk of his car with shaved ice, paper cones, and bottles of flavored syrup and drove up and down the neighborhood selling snow cones as a summer job. On a summer afternoon, it was hot and if you’d been working in the yard, or more likely back then sunbathing, a snow cone was a good thing. And if the guy selling them was cute, so much the better. You would ask for a rainbow snow cone, which took longer to make because he had to pump a stream of syrup from each flavor like stripes over the ball of ice. That gave you time to chat a bit.

He probably enjoyed the benefits of cruising slowly up and down the streets, checking out which cute girl lived where, but more than likely meeting their grubby little brothers with a sticky dime in their hands.

So the guy was probably making payments on his car, but gas back then was about a quarter a gallon. He had wear and tear on his car, tires, insurance, plus his supplies, and he still sold snow cones for a dime, while earning spending money or even feeding a college fund.

I never thought I’d live long enough to see a two-dollar snow cone. Ice cream cones used to cost a nickel for a scoop, but that’s a story for another column.