Inflation: a personal lesson. Most of us get them from time to time, those faint echoes from the past that reveal how prices move up over time. My latest lesson came a few days after a house I once lived in was sold and cleaned out. Among the odd items that surfaced was a timeworn bill for repair work done on a Ford Falcon. The slip of paper, well preserved for its age, listed the cost each new part needed, along with the cost of labor involved. The bill was dated 2/21/63.  

The parts provided were:

1 set of points:                  $2.10

1 condenser:                      $1.00

6 spark plugs:                   $6.30

1 valve cover gasket:     $1.05

1 air filter:                           $3.95

The work included:

tune motor:                      $5.00

adjust valves:                   $3.00

service call + chg bat     $1.50

There you have it. My Ford Falcon was newly tuned with new parts and its battery charged, all for the sum of $23.90.

An amazing bargain, right? Or does this historical document simply provide dramatic proof of the ever-shrinking dollar? We all know the answer to that. To document the obvious, I checked the value of the 1963 dollar versus the present day 2026 dollar. Inflation: a personal lesson learned.

The results weren’t pretty. The purchasing power of one 1963 U.S. dollar would be  equivalent to $10.92 today.  So, that tune-up of my Ford Falcon today, assuming relatively similar costs for parts and labor, would come to 23.90 x 10.92 = $260.99. So my Falcon didn’t sneak by with quite the bargain I first thought it was. See the inexorable trend of inflation in the graph below.

Special Note:

I’m pleased to announce that my memoir, A Streak of Dakota Dust, is now available for sale in all bookstores and on Amazon. com, as an eBook, paperback, or hardcover. For a fuller description of the book, along with sample pages, see my earlier post here. One copy of my book has already made its way to Asheville, NC, where a kind person photographed it leaning against the memorial marking the birthplace of Thomas Wolfe. Who knows? If Maxwell Perkins (see here), who famously edited Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again, were still around today, I might have a chance of becoming almost as well-known as Mr. Wolfe.

A request:

If you do read my memoir, I would love to learn your impression of it. Writers need feedback, and I would appreciate the opinion of all readers, either through this website, or as reviewed on Amazon or elsewhere. Many thanks.