Cost of jeans

Yesterday, we drove to the Factory Outlets to check out their Memorial Day sales. Aside from huge crowds spending their remaining dollars and the last of their three-day weekend, we didn’t find much in terms of bargains. I was actually the lucky one. I got two Levi’s jeans model 505 for just $46.77, tax included. Okay, what does that mean? The element that comes to my mind is a full tank of gas, say 14 gallons of regular. For reasons that I won’t explain here, I remember paying $20.50 in 1977 for a similar pair of Levi’s while gasoline was available at $0.65 a gallon. Now, if we factor in the CPI, the jean that should cost $70.72 today can be purchased for just $23.39 while the gallon of regular that should only cost $2.24 is today hard to find at $3.35. Perhaps that after cooking oil and ethanol, some ingenious aftermarket tinkerer will come up with a conversion kit for combustion engines that runs on old Levi’s!