How the expense of oranges changed, but really didn't at restaurants


Although I've never had a lot of money to throw around, every once in a while I've done something that will often cause gasps of amazement from people that I'm having breakfast with at a restaurant - I order orange juice.

If you've ever done that, or watched someone who is brave enough to do it, you've seen a tiny glass being served, and if you look at the price on the menu, you see something that appears to be as valuable per ounce as Unobtainium. Of course, oranges aren't terribly expensive, you can big up a big bag of them for cheap at the grocery store, but but that doesn't stop restaurants from treating them the same way that my grandma got them back when she was a kid.

By the time this billboard was made, in 1935, oranges really weren't all that expensive anymore, but back when my grandma was a little girl, before that, they were so crazy expensive that she would often get one for a Christmas present. She told this to me quite often, especially when I was surrounded by lots of toys at Christmastime. I could have walked into the kitchen and had all of the oranges that I wanted, so it make think that she was really, really poor, and appreciated simple things. What she didn't tell me was that transporting oranges from far away places like California, Arizona, or Florida, was wildly expensive (we were in Minnesota), especially in the dead of winter, amid snow and ice and sleet and hail.

Getting an orange for Christmas meant that my grandma had someone who really cared about her, and didn't count the cost.


Image from the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections.
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