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¢ 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¢ for those headlines too, when the Boston Post in his boyhood cost 2¢. 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¢ 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.