Shave & a Haircut--$2.35

"Every day for the past two weeks it has been the same," said a checkout girl in a Detroit A & J supermarket. "I just get the prices fixed in my mind when the manager comes up with another half-dozen raises. Eggs are down two cents today--that I can remember."

On the other side of the counter, most of the nation's customers had the same sense of frustration for slightly different reasons. In Los Angeles, the ordinary citizen looked at his breakfast plate; the two eggs staring at him came from a dozen which cost 93-c-; he drank a 94-c--a-lb. coffee, six or seven cents higher than two weeks ago, then headed for the office on a bus whose fare was a third higher than it was a month ago. The story was much the same in shops, department stores, haberdasheries and restaurants. The U.S. was reaching through rising prices to buy what it wanted as a berry picker reaches into a nettle patch. "Sure, they're buyin'," said a Boston salesgirl, "but they're lookin' and pawin' and hemmin' and hawin' before they do."

No Second Coffee. In the restaurants, there was mounting bad news on the menu. Robinson's in Kansas City abandoned its historical attachment to the 49-c- " '49er lunch" and renamed it the " '59-er," with price to match. In Santa Fe, N. Mex., the "Special Mexican Plate" jumped from 75-c- to a dollar. In Manhattan's Hotel Statler, the breakfast that cost 80-c- one morning was up to 95-c- the next.

Some cafe owners kept their prices down but cut their meat portions, refused seconds on coffee and turned to `a la carte menus. In Atlanta, a restaurant proprietor shook his head: "Every day," said he, "I stand in the lobby of the building where my place is and count the lunches going by in paper bags. There are more of those lunch toters every week."

Even the lunch toters were in for trouble at the soft-drink counter. In New York City, bottled Coca-Cola broke loose from its famous nickel moorings for the first time and went on to 6-c-. Other cities might have it worse: half of the nation's 6,000 soft-drink bottlers had upped their wholesale case price. Beer also went up.

But the unkindest cut of all was left to the barbers. Atlanta's haircuts went from 85-c- to a dollar; Chicago's to $1.50 on Saturdays--with shaves at a firm 85-c-. A Chicago Saturday-night man could spend $2.35 for the legendary "shave & a haircut, two bits." Customers had their own recourse. Said a Kansas City barber, "It looks like they're saving up an extra quarter's worth of hair before they come in." Waitresses complained of smaller tips.

Just Wait. Department stores generally stuck close to their original prices, on Christmas goods, largely because they were selling out of big midyear inventories. "But just wait until we do our next buying," warned a Chicago executive. "We'll really be hijacked then." Already, Decca records had spun up 10-c-, Mohawk carpets 10% (the seventh raise, because of wool price increases, this year); some appliances, e.g., dishwashers, were going up about 10%.

So far, customers groused and paid--or as a Seattle grocer put it, they were grumbling to the clerks but not yet to the managers. And, at week's end, there was little hoarding. Just as a good many businessmen put up their prices in anticipation of a price freeze, so a good many householders (who had also been through it all before) seemed to be holding back, when they could, in a vague hope that prices might level off soon anyway.

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