Rant #2,303: I Just Want To Celebrate

Were you around in 1956?

I wasn't, but if you were alive 63 years ago, our President was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and things were much different then than they are today.

Just look at the prices of things back then.

According to the website Little Things (https://www.littlethings.com/how-much-cost-1956) you could actually buy a house for as low as $11,700, and the pricier homes cost about $22,000.

And if you were a renter, you paid in the $80-$90 a month for your abode.

A new car cost $1,700 or so, and if you wanted to get a better model, all you had to do was to fork over $3,100 and you had your dream vehicle.

And to fill that car, you needed gas, and fuel was about 22 cents a gallon, which means you could fill up your tank for less than $3.

You had to eat, and very basic food--bread and eggs--cost 18 cents a loaf, and 45 cents a dozen.

Coffee cost 69 cents per pound, and milk cost 97 cents a gallon.

Of course, wages were much less than they are today, and you could probably exist bringing home less than $100 a week if you budgeted your money the right way.

And TV was a relatively new medium, and it was finally taking over from radio as the top entertainment medium in our homes.

I have painted this picture of 1956 to highlight the fact that today, my parents celebrate their 63rd wedding anniversary.

My father was a kosher butcher back then, working with my grandfather in their store on Delancey Street in Manhattan.

The world was so different back then, maybe much simpler than it is now, but there were still plenty of challenges.

And somehow, through it all, my father met my mother, who was a secretary and lived in Brooklyn, they got together, and well, the rest is history.

I came more than a year later, and then their world was turned completely upside down, but let's focus on my parents right now.

I think my mother said that the first piece of real furniture they had was a brand new black and white Dumont TV. It was one of those televisions from that era that was made like a piece of real furniture, and it probably cost them a pretty penny to buy.

That TV was used by our family until we moved to Long Island in 1971, so it was a great purchase, paying for itself over and over--even as the tubes had to be changed seemingly every couple of months.

My father came from an Orthodox Jewish home, my mom from a much more liberal Jewish upbringing, and somehow, the two of them meshed.

I guess opposites do attract, and I almost wish that I was a fly on the wall the first time my father ever had Chinese food, which was not kosher and which was considered to be exotic at the time, the food that observant Jews would eat to jump over that barrier between total commitment to their religion and total abandonment of those values.

I wish I could have seen my father's face as my mother led him to a non-kosher life ... not total abandonment, but just a little sneak here and there.

Anyway, my parents married 63 years ago today, had their honeymoon at the Concord Hotel in the Catskill Mountains--known back then as "The Jewish Alps"--and started their household.

And as I said before, several months later, in April 1957, I came into the world, and their lives were thrown into chaos from then to now.

But I guess it was a delightful chaos, because they did it again in December 1959, when my sister came into this world.

But through it all--and through the remainder of the 1950s, into the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s, and now, in 2019 and certainly beyond--my parents' marriage has stood the test of time, through highs and lows and everything in between.

It is certainly something to aspire to, but as the Beatles once sang, "All You Need Is Love," and they were so right--and my parents exemplify that belief.

So, happy 63rd anniversary to the loving couple, and let them have at least 63 more anniversaries to cherish ...

... and don't put it past them. If any couple can defy logic and live long enough to outlast us all, it is these two lovebirds.