The Price of Gas...

I just returned from gassing up my mid-sized car.  Six cylinder engine, delivers decent fuel economy, never before lamented not having an electric bike.

I purchased 13 and some-gallons of regular unleaded, "winter blend" petrol and left the giant sum of $64.35 at my local discount Energy Place.  Discount.  Harrummph!  I asked the attendant if he had an application for a second mortgage.  He thought that was a pretty funny joke.

It wasn't a joke.

While nursing the painful hole now left in my meager bank account, which isn't of much account, I reminisced back to a kinder, gentler time.  A time when gas companies were fighting it out with each other at the gas pumps.  Gas wars!  Ever hear of them?  I lived them.  Here's a bit of the story...

It was the fall of 1961 ("It was a dark and stormy night...").  I had just turned 18 and had just acquired my first somewhat fast car.  In a town full of fast cars.  VERY fast cars.  At one time there were 10 American Hot Rod Association national record holders there.  For a town of under 10,000, fast cars, indeed!  

And I'd say it was damn nice of the Standard Oil Company and Phillips Petroleum, in a period of crude oil glut (this was right after Standard's "ARAMCO" started pumping Arabian crude), to decide to try and out-cheap the other guy.  To lower prices in an effort to put the other guy out of business.  Or force it to sell at a discounted stock price.  So the price of gas began to fall.  Precipitously.  Every day.  So that by the end of November, 1961, the price of a gallon of Premium was $0.19 cents a gallon!  

You read that right.  Nineteen - maksalotta - sense!  It was seemingly worth less than water, and we treated it as such.  Talk about wasting gas!  We would drive up and down the "four-lane" highway, which ran through the center of Chillicothe, Missouri.  About five miles of it.  A four-lane highway, with a wide, concrete median, and tall streetlamps, right through town.  So we'd drive north to the end, turn around, burn out, laying loooonnnng streaks of black rubber (hello, "Happy Days!"), drive back south to the end of town, turn around, burn out, repeat.  

All.  Night.  Long.

Got it?  And each time we'd see each other, we'd wave and flash our lights.  And God help us if we didn't!  That'd mean we weren't friendly, and the rumors would start to fly.  Yeah, nothing's changed.  At all.  Everywhere's the same.  

I recall on several occasions I'd fill up, empty the tank, refill it, and then drive most of it out again.  In the same night.  In a town with nothing else to do, this would do.  It did quite nicely, in fact, for hundreds of us over dozens of years.  Don't feel sorry for us.  We didn't.

And oh yeah, when the taunts got too much, one driver would challenge the other to a "contest of speed" at the "Old Highway."  That's one-time Highway 36, which by that time had been replaced by one newer and wider, and much one more protected from annual local Grand River flooding.

So picture an unused two-lane highway, completely deserted, unlighted and just waiting for crazed speed enthusiasts, like me, and like everyone in my home town, to head on out there and drag race.  Like they do on the Discovery Channel's "Street Outlaws."  It's usually on Monday nights, if you'd care to watch.

So dozens of us would head out around midnight to the Old Highway and drag race 'til dawn.  We named it the "Bear Lake Bottoms Timing Association."  Funny.  We made decals for our cars and displayed them prominently.  The cops knew.  Some of them even were known to participate with their private cars...

And back to that "$0.19 Cents per gallon.  When we drove in to the local gas emporium, the bells rang to announce our arrival.  And a paid attendant, usually a retired old gent, would come right out and pump our gas for us, check our oil, check the air in our tires and the water in our radiator.  Each time we bought gas.  All included.  Even if it was the second time in an evening.  Or even third...

So how about that for your "customer service?"  And all for bupkus.  Ahhhhh, but Utopia was not to continue.  The gas companies resolved their issues, to our detriment.  And the price of gas went back up.  I cannot recall to how much, exactly.  But I remember it was still considered cheap.  

So back to the price of gas.  Where you live it might now cost $3.50, or a $1.20 higher than a year ago.  Here, in Taxifornia, where I live, and in New York, it's now approaching $5.00 a gallon.  And from what I hear those who wind O'Biden up and trot him out to spew their Progressive garbage are not done yet.  We can count on the price of gas going up, waaaay up, for some time to come.  

And they even have the chutzpah to tell us that this is a reason to more quickly move to alternative energy, so we don't have to pay these inflated prices for gas!  They inflate the prices, and then present us with an unpalatable remedy for their carnage.  Like your doctor first giving you cancer, and then offering you a treatment for can't live with.  We can thank Joe O'Brandon each time we fill our tanks and deprive our kids of food.

Remember:  A year ago we were Energy Independent.  We pumped more than we used, and exported it as a weapon against socialism and communism.  And its price reflected our World Dominance.  Joe O'Brandon is now begging OPEC to pump more...so we won't have to.  

Join me in a rousing, "Let's Go Brandon!"