Shop Like It's 1981!

 

Market Basket of July 23, 1981

Inflation! Shrinkflation! Grocery Prices in 1981!

You’ve probably heard this phrase lately:

Inflation is the highest it’s been since 1981.

You’ve probably heard it a lot.

You’ve also probably heard this word: Shrinkflation.

That’s a way to disguise inflation: keep the price the same while shrinking the size of the box or the bag.

You might have been trying to remember: What were prices like in 1981.

I’m here to tell you.

Starting in 1978 and continuing on into the 90s the Kingsport Times-News ran a monthly feature called Market Basket. The newspaper picked ten staples of the grocery store and checked the (usually increasing) price each month at three local unnamed grocery stores.

(Probably Oakwood, Giant and Kroger, the big 3 in Kingsport in 1981.)

I printed out the Market Basket for July 1981 – that famous inflation year – and took it to my local market to compare prices. I picked Walmart for two reasons: Walmart is now the nation’s number one grocery store, by sales, and the local Walmart is also the nearest grocery store to my house.  (And all right turns!)

Here's how today’s prices stack up to that Famous Inflation Year of 1981.

First the 1981 Market Basket:

 

Times-News Market Basket of July 23, 1981

 JFG coffee 1 lb. bag - $2.09

Jif peanut butter 1 lb. 2 oz - $2.21

Cheer laundry detergent 3 lb. 1 oz. - $1.94

Parkay margarine 1 lb. - 61 cents

Milk 1 gallon whole - $2.00

Campbell’s Tomato Soup 10 ¾ oz - 27 cents

Crest toothpaste 4.6 oz. - $1.35

White bread 24-oz. loaf - 98 cents

Hamburger 1 lb. - $1.19

Delmonte Pineapple 15 ¼ oz. sliced - 65 cents

Kellogg’s Cornflakes 1 lb. 2 oz. - $1.23

Bounty Paper Towels 85 sq. feet - 84 cents

The newspaper also added two non-grocery items to its Market Basket:

Gas 1 gal regular - $1.35

Mortgage 10 percent down - 16.25 percent

 

 

Now here’s how that compares to today’s grocery prices.

 

July 10, 2022 Market Basket

JFG Coffee 1 lb. bag was $2.09 in 1981 – I couldn’t find JFG in the store. I did find Eight O’Clock Coffee which was $14.54 for a 36-oz. bag and Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee which was $8.72 for a 12-oz. bag. Eight O’Clock Coffee was originally the house brand at A&P supermarkets. (You can buy JFG Special Blend at Walmart online – a 30.2-oz. can is $8.28.)

Jif Peanut Butter 1 lb. 2 oz ($2.21 in 1981) – I haven’t seen Jif Peanut Butter on the grocery store shelves in months. (There was a recall followed by another recall.) The closest I could find was Peter Pan Peanut Butter. A 20-oz. jar was $3.72. (At Walmart online Jif is listed as “out of stock.”)

Cheer Laundry Detergent 3 lb. 1 oz. box ($1.94 in 1981) – Walmart had exactly zero powder laundry detergents. And no Cheer. Everything was liquid. A 1.2 gallon container of Tide was $21.24. (Sidenote: Cheer was Jerry’s favorite laundry detergent on “Seinfeld.”) You can get a 112 oz. box of powder Cheer at Walmart.com for $12.47.

Parkay Margarine 1 lb. package (64 cents in 1981) – No Parkay at Walmart. Imperial Margarine – which used to belittle butter as the “high priced spread” in TV commercials – costs $1.48 for a one-pound package.

Milk 1 gallon whole ($2.00 in 1981) – Store brand (Great Value) was $3.86 for a gallon of whole milk.

Campbell’s Tomato Soup 10 ¾ oz can (27 cents in 1981) – Here was a surprise. Campbell’s Tomato Soup still comes in a 10 ¾ oz. can. But now it costs $1.72.

Crest Toothpaste 4.6 oz. tube ($1.35 in 1981) – I don’t know how to make a direct comparison here. There are about 37 different varieties of Crest now. I found the bottom level economy variety, a 5.7 oz. tube, for $1.96.

White bread 24-oz. loaf (98 cents in 1981) – Again I went with the store brand, Great Value. A 20-oz. loaf was $1.00. If you prefer a name brand, a 2-pound load of Merita was $1.92.

Hamburger 1 lb. (65 cents in 1981) – One pound was $4.57.

Delmonte Pineapple Sliced 15 ¼ oz. can (65 cents in 1981) – It now comes in a 20-oz. can and it costs $1.48.

Kellogg’s Cornflakes 1 lb. 2 oz. box ($1.23 in 1981) – Again a surprise. Cornflakes still comes in a 1 lb. 2 oz. box. It is now called “Family Size” and costs $4.28. I might add that I don’t know anyone who eats Cornflakes. There were far fewer rows than almost any other cereal – only four rows, all on the bottom shelf, where adult cereals are usually positioned. (Because adults, especially an adult who would eat Cornflakes, enjoys bending over.) Kids’ cereals, the sugar-laden brands, are always at kids’ eye level. The cereal with the most rows and shelves, indicating it is the best seller, was Cheerios. An added note: Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran, one of the most expensive cereals, took up only one row on one shelf. It could be the poster child for Shrinkflation. It’s now only slightly bigger than a Cracker Jacks box. Which makes me wonder how tiny a Cracker Jacks box is today.

Bounty Paper Towels 85 sq. feet (84 cents in 1981) – Comparisons are difficult but I think the two-roll pack contains 88.3 square feet (the package notation is f-squared, which I assume means square feet), and costs $4.87.

 

Gas 1 gallon regular ($1.35 in 1981) – what did you pay last week? Here in East Tennessee I paid $4.47.

Mortgage 10 percent down (16.25 percent) – NerdWallet says a 30-year loan with 10 percent down and good credit is 6.327 percent. (7.2 percent with bad credit.)

1992 Times-News Market Basket

 

 

 

Barber Vernon Winfrey (1933-2022)

Vernon Winfrey in 2000, a few weeks after I visited his barbershop in Nashville. 

Vernon Winfrey passed away last week at age 88. Most of the obituaries focused on his famous daughter Oprah. But before Oprah was famous it was Vernon who brought fame and honor to the Winfrey name. He was a Nashville barber and long-time city councilman.

In 2000 I spent the morning with Vernon and his customers for a book I was writing called “Do Bald Men Get Half Price Haircuts?”

Here is what I wrote about Vernon.

 A Morning with Vernon Winfrey

Today's barbershop discussion centers on manifest destiny. Sort of. The customer in the center chair believes that it is not manifest destiny which brought a pro football team to town, but too much emphasis on sports in society. "If they'd quit spending all that money on sports and start spending it on helping people…."

"But people like sports, it brings them together," counters the barber at the far chair.

There is a pause hanging in the air, along with a puff of talcum that Vernon Winfrey has just dusted onto his customer. Everyone is waiting to hear what Vernon thinks. After all this is his shop.

"People have got to help themselves," he says, in the slow, methodical manner that characterizes everything in this barbershop on Nashville, Tennessee's northside.

Vernon Winfrey has been barbering in this spot for 34 years. "I rented from a man for the first ten, then I bought it."

When he started out his clientele was mostly white. "That's what the neighborhood was then." But as the neighborhood changed, so too did the customers. Now it is almost all black. "There's still a few white folk come in, old customers, friends."

If the name Winfrey seems familiar, it's because you see it on TV, every afternoon. On his daughter's talk show. Vernon Winfrey's daughter is named Oprah.

 

When I called the Tennessee Barber Board looking for interesting barbershops to visit in the state, the first place the board secretary recommended was Vernon Winfrey's.

"I'm not really interested in a celebrity-dad shop," I told her.

"Oh no, you don't need to go there because of Oprah. You need to go there because of Vernon." It seems Vernon Winfrey was a name in Nashville long before his daughter anchored the noon news there. "He used to be on city council. He's done a lot of good in this community."

 

I was in Vernon's shop a good hour before there was even any mention of Oprah. It's not that Vernon avoids the topic of his daughter. He's proud, very proud, of her. "This place put Oprah through college," he notes. "People come in and say, 'Oprah's daddy ought to have a nicer place than this.'"

Winfrey's Barber Shop is a comfortable place, not run-down, not dirty, but comfortable. A place where you could spend the afternoon. But not luxurious. "I guess I should fix it up a bit but I don't have much time left. Besides they say if you clean up, the rats will leave. Then I might not have any customers left."

Winfrey's Barbershop is not plastered with Oprah posters. In fact if the folks at the Tennessee Barber Board hadn't told me Vernon was Oprah's dad, I never would have known from the décor. There are a couple of small family snapshots with Oprah in them, but you have to go up to the mirror to tell. Mostly there are political posters. although Vernon denies he is now or ever has been a politician. He admits he was a member of Nashville City Council. "I was in the political arena. But I was never a politician."

 

Vernon's place is well-lit, with accent lighting around the ceiling. The accent lights are hidden in what looks for all the world like guttering. Vernon says, "When people ask me why I've got gutter in the shop, I tell them in case the roof leaks, it'll catch the water."

A yellowed newspaper on the back mirror, Hillbilly Times, a Gatlinburg souvenir paper, proclaims, "Vernon Winfrey Named Tennessee's Best Barber."

Twelve-year-old David is Vernon's protegee. When Vernon finishes with a haircut, David hops up and brushes' the customer off. It's a courtly gesture, but this is a courtly barber shop. In between brushings David pores over a car stereo catalog. He's already car-shopping. This morning he found one in the paper for $200. A customer warns him that if he buys one that cheap it'll take him the four years until he gets his license just to fix it up.

Vernon Winfrey was born in Mississippi, in a little town outside Starkville. He moved to Nashville after he got out of the service. "I always cut hair, from the age of 12 or 13; people would give me ten or fifteen cents." After the service he took a job as a janitor at Vanderbilt University. "I tell people I was the best janitor at Vanderbilt. They say, janitor? I say that job got me to the next job."

He was saving up to go to barber college in Memphis - "the only barber college we had here was white. See that was before integration." Then the man who owned the Nashville barber college decided to open a little shop to train blacks. Vernon enrolled. "I didn't have to go to learn to cut hair. I already knew how to cut hair. But I had to get my license."

Even after he got his license he continued working at a uniform company. "I was making $48 a week. One night I cut hair and made $15. That was cutting from 4 to 7. That Saturday I cut hair again and made $30. That's when I figured out I could do better cutting hair full time."

And that's what Vernon Winfrey has been doing ever since.

 

After clipping my ear hair and spraying me with some of the sweetest tonics my scalp has ever known, Vernon pulls the hair cloth off with a flourish. David races up to brush me off and hand me my coat.

As I leave, I can't help but admire the way I smell, the amalgam of the shaving cream, the oils and the powders. When I meet my old college roommate Dan Pomeroy for lunch a half hour later, I do something I never did when we roomed together: I ask him to smell me.

He declines.

Vernon in 1975, when he first ran for Nashville City Council. At the time Oprah was a local television reporter.