Nothing Is What It Used to Be

By Otto Friedrich

One of the most incredible pieces of news in the past month, to one surprised middle-aged person, was the announcement from Washington that the number of Americans officially designated as poor had increased to 14% of the population. What seemed incredible was not the painful number of the poor or the painful increase in that number--painful things do not faze the surprised middle-aged person--but rather the fact that the Federal Government now defines the poverty line as an income of $9,287 for a family of four.

The younger generation knows that $9,287 will not buy many tickets to a Fleetwood Mac concert, but the S.M.A.P. remembers when $10,000 was generally accepted as the unofficial frontier to wealth. To be "a $10,000-a-year man" was synonymous with membership in the upper middle class. That was what the S.M.A.P.'S father had earned as a professor at Harvard, and when the S.M.A.P. was young he considered it the height of vaulting ambition to earn as much. Some day, when he too made $10,000 a year, he would be able to consider himself a success.

It is a familiar sign of aging, of course, to be surprised at change in general and changed prices in particular. But perhaps the true sign of age is acceptance. "Eighty years old!" Paul Claudel wrote in his journal. "No eyes left, no ears, no teeth, no legs, no wind! And how astonishingly well one does without them." The S.M.A.P., who still retains most of his faculties, also retains a childish capacity for surprise.

Particularly about prices. The S.M.A.P. keeps reading about fearful rates of inflation, but he still cannot get used to surrendering 75-c- to enter the pestilential inferno of the New York City subway (and reading headlines wondering whether impending increases can hold the fare to $1). He can remember paying a fare of a nickel. He begrudges paying 30-c- for those headlines too, when the Boston Post in his boyhood cost 2-c-. Well, the Boston Post no longer exists; perhaps he will see the day when the New York subway no longer exists either.

When the sun is shining, the S.M.A.P. can treat it all as a game, like trivia questions. Who played second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1940? Pete Coscarart, that's who. What did a haircut cost in those days? Fifty cents. And a Hershey bar? Five cents. When the S.M.A.P. reads that E.T. earned $17 million over the July 4 weekend, he remembers paying 25-c- to see Gone With the Wind. In fact, he remembers when Gone With the Wind's gross of $40 million established a record that was expected to stand forever, like Ty Cobb's 96 stolen bases or Babe Ruth's 60 homeruns.

The modern economy is not just a dismal saga of inflation though. The S.M.A.P. can also remember when the first ball-point pens came on the market for $12.50. No longer, said the ads, could ink leak from your fountain pen and ruin your new shirt. The S.M.A.P. had in those days a rich friend who spent $52 on the Fritz Busch performance of The Marriage of Figaro (on 17 breakable records); that version, one of half a dozen, now costs $18. When the S.M.A.P. first went to Europe in 1946, the only way he could find to get there was a Turkish freighter that took 28 days from New York to Marseille, for $220.

Europe provided its own revelations about the cost of living. When the S.M.A.P. first went to inspect the rubble-strewn wreckage of Germany, $1 was supposed to be worth ten reichsmarks, but the real unit of currency was the American cigarette. A carton cost $1 at the PX and could be sold on the street for 1,000 reichsmarks, except that nobody used reichsmarks; one swapped. The strange thing was that people went right on smoking. The S.M.A.P., who chain-smoked in those days, never did have much talent for finance. He declined an offer of a harpsichord for six cartons of cigarettes (a harpsichord nowadays costs as much as $15,000). The last time he was in Germany, he paused at the Frankfurt airport just long enough to have a cup of coffee, which cost him $2. He was, as usual, surprised.

All financial transactions are, of course, a kind of swapping, in which money is merely a convenient symbol for work or scarcity or an unusual idea. When the S.M.A.P. feels nostalgia for the 55-c- ticket to the bleachers at Fenway Park, he has to remind himself that he earned $20 a week as a police reporter on the Des Moines Register. A generation earlier, when Vice President Thomas Marshall bemoaned the passing of the 5-c- cigar, Dreiser's Sister Carrie found a job in a factory for $4.50 a week and was happy to get it. Some of the most interesting swaps can hardly be priced at all.

When the S.M.A.P. sold his first novel, he invested the entire advance in a shaky jalopy so that he could stop commuting to work on a bicycle. The car was no good, but neither was the novel; neither lasted as long as the S.M.A.P.'S surprise.

When the S.M.A.P. eventually reached his father's eminence and became a $10,000-a-year man, the object of his surprise was the price of his children's shoes, which seemed to need replacing every few months. On discreet inquiry he discovered that Harvard had more than doubled the parental paycheck in the intervening years, and the S.M.A.P. remained close to what is now called the poverty line. At a dinner party given by prosperous friends who then lived in an apartment overlooking the Hudson River, he raised the question of how much one must earn to live well in New York City, not luxuriously but well. He knew his hostess was extravagant, but he could only be surprised when she said, "I can't imagine anyone doing it for less than $50,000."

Having heard recently of Manhattan apartments renting at $10,000 a month--even $15,000--the S.M.A.P. tried again to discover what the good life should cost, but the other players proved balky. This is the era of blue jeans, and materialism is considered gauche.

"What does living well mean anyway? said one ot the guests, who jogs. "You want to go to the opera, and you're mad that an orchestra seat costs $50, but I don't want to go to the opera."

"If we have it, we spend it," said his wife. "If we don't, we don't."

"That's what you get for the cost of living," said the husband.

"You live."

By the rules of the S.M.A.P.'S game, such philosophizing was not an answer to the question of how much it would cost to indulge in the revenge of living well. He ventured a wild guess of his own: $200,000. Nobody seemed surprised.

--By Otto Friedrich

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