Remembering 18.9-cent gas

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON — Somehow, for more than a half-century, the image has stuck in my mind: a gas station on Route 1 in New Jersey, a metal sign out front, swinging on hinges. Its message: Gas, 18.9 cents a gallon.

With gasoline prices recently spiking past $3 a gallon, it's obvious our blissful long ride on cheap fuel, so ingrained it morphed into the American psyche and assumed birthright, is finally sputtering to an end.

-snip-

The very resources that made America's 20th-century way of life possible — cheap fuel and cheap land at the forefront — have vanished.

Instead, the 21st century is delivering massive environmental, economic and political threats. The magnitude of Hurricane Katrina is an example: Its arc of destruction encompasses an area as large as Italy. And its impact was made much worse because of the land and energy and transportation choices of the past half-century.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002565359_peirce17.html

[madrchsod]

1. 3 for a dollar in the early 60`s

those were the days my friend, those were the days

[Rowdyboy]

2. My dad was a trucker and in Florida circa 1962 we saw 18.9 cents a gallon

but there was a gas war going on.

[chalky]

3. I'm aging myself, but I remember laughing at my entry in my HS Senior

Memory page: "Wow! Gas is up to 53-cents a gallon!"

Of course I was laughing at that page back when gas was 93-cents a gallon.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. You must be about my age

Gas was 49 cents a gallon when I started driving in the mid 1970's.

That was about the time of the Arab oil embargo. As a country it seems we've forgotten the lessons of that time.

[tridim]

5. I was born in 70

so the cheapest price I remember was 75 cents, probably around 1976. By the time I was driving it was around a dollar, or slightly less. I can't imagine being a teen driver today, crusing the strip must really suck at $3.20/gallon.

[unrepuke]

6. 1962 - Gas War @ 23¢ - I was usually broke and had to siphon

Ahhh, the good ol' days!

Now everybody has locking caps. Damn!x(

[man4allcats]

7. Yes, I remember.

At the time I was madly in love with a beautiful hippie girl named Micki (short for Michelle). Like the 18.9 cents per gallon, she too has long since been just a memory though a lovely one nevertheless. Ah well. What can I say? In the end we will all be only memories for awhile and finally merely forgotten dust to enrich the soil and maybe help a tree grow -

If Dubya's Corporate Thugs Haven't Poisoned the Entire Planet Into a Lifeless Rock by Then!!!

[Ally McLesbian]

8. As late as the late 1980s

the gas prices were well below a dollar. I clearly remember that. It didn't spike above a dollar until Saddam decided to invade Kuwait.

Inflation adjusted though, the late 1980s had the cheapest gasoline ever, pretty much. Combine that with cheap pickup trucks, and you have a truck boom that lasted all through the 1990s and well into this year.

[n2doc]

10. Actually in 1999 gas prices were below a dollar a gallon too.

I remember writing a friend in fall 1999 that gas had gotten down to 69c/gallon in South Texas. People really have quickly forgotten just how good we had it in the Clinton years...

[DubyaSux]

9. Well....

Not to be a stick in the mud, but gas costs roughly the same now. Gas costing $.75 a gallon in 1975 would cost $2.81 now when adjusted for inflation. I'm paying $2.65/gal for gas at my Ameristop up the street here in Ohio, so the cost is slightly better now.

[PsN2Wind]

14. Little late her, DubyaSux

But now adjust average hourly wage and the minimum wage for inflation and show me gas isn't more expensive.

[Kablooie]

11. There used to be a worry because the pumps only had two digits.

No one believed it would really go over $1.00

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

12. I'm rather bothered that no one has read the article

The point of it was not nostalgia but rather that because of the mindset perhaps fostered by cheap gas we as Americans have been slow to prepare for the day when alternative fuels may be an absolute necessity for survival.

As well it focuses on the role our dependence on fossil fuel has played in global warming.

[struggle4progress]

13. I remember driving through Nevada in the early 1970's and being ..

.. SHOCKED that the locals were selling gas for the exorbitant price $1/gallon. It was many years before I saw prices that high anywhere else in the country.

[Mr. Streisand]

15. Remembering $2.69 gas, fondly...

www.thanksalotw.com

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

16. I'm feeling old before my time

I'm just in my middle 20's and gas was 89/90 cents like in 1999, I remember even the first month of getting my license in the middle 90's, I got gas at a station having a special for 59 cent a gallon, Filled up the gas guzzling firebird I had at the time for like under 15 dollars.

[emc]

17. I was a trucker in 72

I was a trucker in 72 and I remember filling up five trucke on 15 cent diesel fuel every night----still made a dollar a mile but had a lot more to take home-----after thought, cigarettes were also 15 cents a pack---