Mine was $150 at a garage sale and I do the exact same thing. I keep a little note on my phone of what I spend on meat runs versus what the same stuff would cost at the store, and last month I got 20 pounds of chicken leg quarters for like $18 and froze them in meal size bags. We eat way better now too because I can grab a pack of pork chops on sale and not worry about it going bad. The one thing I'd say is don't fill it up just because you have the space, that's how I ended up with three tubs of ice cream and a turkey nobody asked for.

My grandma's family came from a tiny town in Kentucky called Bug, which nobody could ever find on a map. Turned out the census taker spelled it "Buggs" with two Gs in 1920 and then just "Bugg" in 1930, so the town itself was as messed up as your grandpa's name. What finally worked was hunting down the school district, since the whole county only had like three of them back then. I spent maybe six weekends on that before a volunteer at the historical society pointed me to the district records, and boom, there they all were. Funny how the workarounds always come from people who actually know the records instead of the search box.