As one of the old men of Hive, I often find myself reminiscing about my youth. The other day I wrote about taking the bus and train from the suburbs of Chicago to Wrigley Field in the city. That particular story took place when I was around 13 but I started doing that when I was ten years old. Now I can't imagine a ten year old crossing the street by themself let alone taking multiple public transportation methods into the city without an adult. But today I am thinking about something else... what I used to be able to buy with a nickel/5 pennies/.05 USD. And thinking back, there were a ton of options.
First I have to start by pointing out one of the weirdest and most amazing things from my childhood. We had a candy store directly next to my grade school. I mean it was touching the "playground" (black cement with some things painted on it). We would have to go past it in order to get the bigger concrete sports play area (apparently concrete was softer back then because there wasn't a shredded tire or wood chips to protect our fragile little bodies anywhere in site. So this candy store was basically on school property and we crammed into it before school, after school, and during our one hour long lunch and playtime. yes we had ONE FULL HOUR to play every single day. Maybe that is why I was never diagnosed with ADHD? But I digress. Back to the candy store.
That store, which was probably about 100 square feet, was filled from floor to ceiling with sugar in every form possible. There wasn't a single inch of wasted space in the joint. This was the 1970s and they still had things you could buy with a freaking penny (remember those?)! My favorite was a single yellow Jolly Rancher (insert chef's kiss here). But this isn't about pennies, it's about nickels... wonder why I'm writing about nickels on Hive today. And there was plenty that a nickel could get you back then (like obviously 5 jolly ranchers). i don't remember paying tax on anything so I am guessing the owners didn't report a single dime... I mean nickel to the government.
Some of my favorite 5 cent items in the store were Bazooka bubble gum. Not only would you get a disgusting hard rock piece of nearly impossible to chew bubble gum, but the wrapper also had a little comic book page inside featuring bazooka Joe! Oh the fun Joe and I had all those years (I actually don't remember anything about him as they were incredibly stupid). If my teeth survived the trauma induced by the cheapest bubble gum known to man, I would assault them with a delicious Bit-O-Honey. These were again made of some kind of space age material that was nearly impossible to chew. And I assure you, there was not a drop of honey in those plastic rectangles of doom. But the queen mother of all the 5 cent candies were Charms Blowpops. Now that was a bargain. Not only did you get the hard candy outside you could enjoy during recess, you also got the gum you could chew for the first half of class upon arrival. Mind you, it was chewable for a good thirty minutes but it had lost all of its flavor at the 30 second mark.
But the candy store wasn't the only thing accepting our nickels. Grocery stores and Toys-R-Us also had machine that would dispense worthless toys for a mere nickel. I never met a super ball I didn't want to buy. Luckily they were cheap because I never kept one for more than 2 minutes. I am convinced that my parents house has about 2500 super balls under every piece of furniture in the place. But if solid rubber balls weren't your cup of tea, you could also get little crappy rings with spiders or monsters on them or spinning tops that no one wanted.
This must be from the rich neighborhood. Most of those things cost a whopping 10 cents!
One of the happiest days of my life is when our grade school installed a pencil vending machine outside the cafeteria. No. I was not super into writing. You see, this vending machine dispensed pencils... with football teams' logos on them!!!!! I'm pretty sure this was installed to train little kids to start gambling at a young age. We would line up at the machine with a pocket full of nickels until you actually got something besides the Seattle freaking Seahawks. And if you got a Bears pencil... hold onto your butts... you were the king of the classroom until you inevitably lost the pencil the next day. Of course I would trade those for the San Diego Chargers pencils because I actually enjoyed offensive football instead of offensive football (I'll give you a minute to figure out what I did there).
So yeah, back in my day we could buy something with a nickel... and we liked it.
