Trinidad & Tobago Newsday
Monday, March 26 2007
What you can get for $1
LARA PICKFORD- GORDON :
:
With money not going as far as it used to, and knowing that I will have to pay $1 more to get to and from home via taxi, I started wondering about prices and what can be purchased for $1.
So I did a little survey in Port-of-Spain.“Two celery for a dollar!” a vendor on Charlotte Street shouted. Her call was accurate. I asked a seller what I could get for one dollar. His response, “A piece of pumpkin.” The prices of the items he had on sale were as follows — potato 3lbs for $5, $3/lb for melongene, $3 a bag for onion, cucumber 2lbs/$3.
On Charlotte Street, 12 pimentos cost $2 as well as a bag of small sweet peppers.
In a grocery, finding items for a $1 was also not easy. Imagine a small pack of 10g black pepper was $1.40. Other seasonings were also above $1 and snacks were also above $1.
At a store specialising in snacks and sandwiches,
I could purchase corn chips, cookies and chocolates, caramel pop corn for $1.I did not even bother going into clothing, shoe, jewelry, food places to ask. The answer is obvious.
But I was boldfaced enough to approach the kiosk in a mall selling accessories for electronic items and was informed
I could get a yard of soldering wire for $1.At another kiosk selling cosmetics
I could get a pack of hairpins. “That’s about it unfortunately,” the man behind the counter said.
I tested a few people with the question and got a range of responses —
two 50 cents channa, two hops bread, a small lime, three mints, three ochros, and a “piper sandwich” — a pack of digestive biscuits.One of my colleagues said wheat crisps. According to his reasoning the healthy fibre of the biscuits expands with fluid in the stomach so “for a $1 you can last just about a dollar and a half.”When I told a man from Central that two pieces of celery were on sale for $1 he thought he should come to town. Of course all of this just reminds that a dollar does not go as far as it used to.
Decades ago, when there was no energy boom or many of the things that define our modern times, people actually were able to buy food items for cents.
A man in his 60s said in the late 1940s early 1950s you could buy a small piece of cheese for six cents, a tin of sardines for 19 cents, a quart of bread for 25 cents, beef cost 80 cents/lb, fish and shrimp was sold for two shillings.
Rice, peas and sugar were sold loose so people could purchase whatever they needed for less than $1.
I expect in the future when the dollar loses more buying power we will be lucky to get one stalk of celery. These days destitute people hardly beg for a dollar. Instead they ask passers by to purchase “something to eat” for them.
These days a five dollar bill is the equivalent of a dollar in terms of purchasing power.
And even the $5 has limits in our booming economy. You could get two doubles but not a red Solo.
