When I was 18, a tank of gas cost about eight bucks

[Oeditpus Rex]

Now, that's two gallons.



Other than homes, I can't think of anything else that's gone up 1,000 percent in 34 years.

[SeattleGirl]

1. Hells, Oedi, I still remember the gas wars.

Themz was the days, eh?

[Oeditpus Rex]

2. Yup

But I was thinking about when I had to pay for it. :)



I think it was 1960 when we rode a gas war all the way to Vancouver and back. Don't think we paid more than 24.9¢ the whole trip. Now, I'd love to see $2.49.

[SeattleGirl]

3. Yer makin' me sob in me suds!

:cry:

[Oeditpus Rex]

4. Heebus, don't do that!

You're waterin' it down. :D

[SeattleGirl]

5. Not to worry, me boyo.

I turned me head a'fore the tears started fallin'.

[Oeditpus Rex]

7. The mark of a veteran drinker

:P

[SeattleGirl]

8. Hehe!

:spray:

[RebelOne]

17. I remember the gas wars well when the prices were in the teens. n/t

[Fenris]

6. In Germany that would get you a single gallon.

Please tell me you have fond, exhaust-tinged memories of pre-smog regulation V8s, because as someone born during the tail end of Malaise I long to know what that was like.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. I have a V8 in my driveway

with no pollution-control devices except a PCV valve, and quite the rumbling exhaust. :D

[billyskank]

10. Over here too

It costs me $100 bucks equivalent to fill up my four-cylinder, and that will only be good for about 380 miles.

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. Wow, it sure costs a lot more

when you call it "petrol." :D

[zanne]

19. HAH! nt

[philosophie_en_rose]

12. When I learned to drive, gas cost 97 cents a gallon.

That was 1997, when gas was cheap and the internet was going to make us all rich.

Good times.

[fizzgig]

32. same here

now i want to cry every time i fill up

[BobMorr]

13. 1973

I had a Plymouth Cuda with a 340. Used to cruise all night on $5 in premium gas. Spending $5 on gas was alot back then. Going to high school in the 70s, I worked a part time job. I made $3.25 an hour. How times have changed. Viet Nam was was going on. With Iraq happening certain things still remain the same.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

14. Gas war: I remember my dad paying 3 cents a gallon

in the early nineteen fifties!

[RebelOne]

18. No way. I remember the gas wars and the price never went to 3 cents.

The teens, maybe, but not single digits.

[PVnRT]

15. I'm under thirty, and I remember gas being under $1 in high school

[baldguy]

16. In college I had a Rabbit.

I ran out of gas in the country. I was able to push it about a half mile (yeah, it was mostly downhill) to a gas station. I had 45 cents in my pocket, and I was able to buy enough gas to get home.

Last night I pumped $42 into my Cobalt.

[malta blue]

20. It cost me $8 to fill up my Tercel in 1992

when I was living in Kentucky and gas was $.73 a gallon.

:(

[raccoon]

21. Medical care? Prescription drugs? nt

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

22. i'm only 20 but I remember the summer of 97 or 98

We went cross country as a family and gas was really cheap back then - 1.00 in some parts of the country if I recall correctly.

Now that I'm 20 and need a car, I can't even afford the gas. If I didn't live in NYC I don't know how I would get around without one. If I were still upstate I'd be spending my paychecks solely to get to and from work.

[kentauros]

23. Umm, and how much were y'all making per hour back then?

Average annual income?
Everything in perspective ;)

[Oeditpus Rex]

25. I was making minimum wage — $2.50 in Kollyforniya

To keep pace with gas prices, that'd need to be about $25 now. Instead, it's $8.

[kentauros]

35. Sure, I know most wages haven't kept pace with fuel prices

but fuel-efficiency has gone up and you can get even more cars that are efficient, compared to "the good old days" of low fuel prices and mostly guzzlers for sale.

I don't like paying the higher prices, either. However, my wages have kept up with fuel costs, so I would guess it all depends on what you do for a living and how much of your income goes to fuel anyway. I just don't think about what things cost "long ago" since my wages were lower then, too. Perhaps one of the biggest things we should be fighting for is higher minimum wages or tie them to cost of living increases, unlike what we have now.

Is that agreeable? :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

39. I've been a big COLA advocate for awhile

— ever since I crunched some numbers and discovered that, to keep pace with the Cost of Living Index since 1974 (I use that year as a benchmark because it's when I started working for a wage), minimum wage today would need to be something like $10.78.

After all, you're right — it isn't so much what stuff costs as the buying power of what we earn.

[hunter]

24. When I was eighteen I could have bought a dozen tanks of gas for a hard day's work.

Five bucks of gas back then could keep me amused for a week. Whenever I had a fairly decent job, I simply didn't worry much about the cost of gasoline, maybe not at all.

Today you'd have to be making at least $450 a day to feel the same way about gasoline prices. In a few weeks it will be $500 a day.

How many eighteen year olds do you know who are making that kind of money?

[WritingIsMyReligion]

26. I remember my mom getting angry when gas hit like $1.50/gal, back in the mid-90s.

:rofl:

[Oeditpus Rex]

28. And people said, 'I'm not gonna drive anymore'

Yeah. That happened.



I still remember a dream I had in 1975, when gas prices first started to spike. In the dream, it'd gotten up to about 70 cents.

I woke up thinking, "Thank dog that'll never happen."



:crazy:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

31. Exactly.

Now when you go to the gas station, you're excited if it's under $3.50--you'd piss your pants with joy if it fell under $3.00

:D

[Oeditpus Rex]

33. And therein lies their eee-vill plan

Make it so we'll be happy with gas at 50 cents... then a buck... then a buck-fifty... then two bucks...

[sasquatch]

27. When John McCain was 18, the internal combustion engine wasn't even invented yet

:D

[Reverend_Smitty]

29. Hell I got my license in early 2001

and regular gas was only about $1.05-1.10 a gallon...I guess this was before our fearless leader was able to implicate his "energy policy"

Here in NJ, we still have the cheapest gas in the country and I paid $3.29 yesterday, up from $3.09 last week! That's 300% in 7 years!

le sigh...

[Oeditpus Rex]

30. You could get a pretty good seat at a ball game for about $6 in 1974

Now, to sit where we sat then, it's $35-$42.



That's about in line with normal inflation, though. Not wages, just inflation.

[Reverend_Smitty]

36. At least I was earning an hourly wage back in 01

Now I go to school full time and my graduate assistant salary goes 100% to my tuition costs. If it weren't for the occasional freelance job opportunities, I couldn't afford to even drive to school let alone go to a game.

The one trend that bothers me about ticket prices that seems to be pretty recent. Each game fits into a pricing tier like bronze, silver, gold and platinum now...so a regular season game against the Nats may only be a "bronze" game and be $25 but a "platinum" game against the Yankees in the same seat may cost $50

I'd love to see one more game at Shea this summer but with tickets, food and train fare...who knows. Maybe I can convince my dad to take me

[Oeditpus Rex]

38. I've wondered why they haven't done that since the beginning

Not that I'd be in favor of it, but it is sort of a marketing natural — charging more for that which is in higher demand.

Maybe it's because they've had to cover payrolls in the mega-millions only recently.

Something just occurred to me, though: When the National League was founded in 1876, ticket prices were set at 50 cents. In 1876, that might've been a day's pay for a lot of people. Then again, it's the same with today's prices. (The upstart American Association set its prices at 25 cents, figuring an appeal to the "working man" — along with beer sales, which the NL then prohibited — would help it flourish. But it lasted only 10 seasons.)

[Reverend_Smitty]

40. Cheap tickets and beer...you'd think it would be a sure fire winner...

[Oeditpus Rex]

41. Well, those were kinda tumultuous times for baseball

The American Association didn't have the financial backing of the NL, so a lot of its clubs jumped leagues for the economic security. Also, the AA had a rep as the "beer and whiskey league" because of alcohol sales and because many of its clubs were in "river towns" (St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Louisville), which were seen by many as low-class then, and were owned by brewmeisters. (Google "Chris von der Ahe" sometime. He was a saloon owner who bought the St. Louis Browns, and he was one funny dude, though unintentionally.)

[Reverend_Smitty]

46. I like reading about the early "colorful" characters of baseball

They all seemed to be the hard living, hard drinking types

[Oeditpus Rex]

49. They had personality

Now, they have agents and publicists.



Have you heard of the "Chipmunks"? They were the "new breed" of sportswriters in NYC in the early '60s. One time, Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry excused himself from an interview to take a phone call from his wife. When he returned, someone asked what she was doing. "Feeding the baby," Terry said. "Breast or bottle?" one of the Chipmunks asked.

[Reverend_Smitty]

37. dupe

[guitar man]

34. I remember

growing up in rural OK about '70-71, there were two stations across the street from each other in our little town. They would have gas wars on the weekend and I remember seeing gas at 18 cents a gallon...

[Call Me Wesley]

42. And while it's so cheap today,

I suggest you should fill your muscle car up to the hilt! :really:

[Oeditpus Rex]

44. Yeah, I should

Especially now, while it's got like a quarter-tank. It'd cost "only" about $50 to top it off.

But if I wait, my next tank could easily be $80.

x(

Still, billyskank said it costs him like $100 to fill his tank, which I assume holds about 12 gallons. (Mine holds 20.) Then again, some maniac could shove a pineapple down his windpipe and it'd cost him nothing when he went to hospital to have it removed. Then again again, every pence he makes goes to the Crown for that privilege, so he has to beg in the streets to buy a loaf of bread, if he remembers.

[Call Me Wesley]

45. What it costs here:

And I got a medium price of CHF 1.97 per liter = $ 1.96 per liter.

1 US gallon is 3.78541178 liter (or litre, whatever you Murkins call the right system,) so this makes $ 7.40 (approx.) per gallon. See the difference?

Shut up! Shut up, you American. You always whine, you American. You whine and whine and say 'let me tell you how much the gas is' and 'I just wanna whine about the gas price'. Well, you're getting it almost for free, so shut up!

;)

[Oeditpus Rex]

51. Piss off!

All you Yurpeens drive those itty-bitty cars that get 800 miles per gallon... or parsecs per splunge, or whateverthefuckedup kinda system you use.







:P

[Call Me Wesley]

52. Ha!

It's a real Messerschmidt. Jawoll, Sir! :patriot:

[Oeditpus Rex]

55. Wo ist der Kannon?

If that's it in the back, I sense a rather serious design flaw.

[Call Me Wesley]

56. It's a stealth one, of course.

Here's the only picture showing the Kraftstrahlkanone on these cars in occupied France. It was driven by Oberltnt. Friedrich "Fritze" Gestrakkenstrunz and his wife, Kpl. Greta "Ilsa" Gestrakkenstrunz.



But, back to the topic - it drove 5000 miles on 1.5 gallons. It had pedals, too. Unfortunately, these cars weren't much fun in Stalingrad later.

[Oeditpus Rex]

57. Cool it, Kubelwagen cat

I am in Detroit being born.







Nazis rode to war on GM wheels

[Call Me Wesley]

58. And now you ride a Swiss car,

you have kome a long way!

[Oeditpus Rex]

59. Swiss...?

Das Kaminobahn? :shrug:

[Call Me Wesley]

61. Louis Chevrolet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Chevrolet

[Oeditpus Rex]

62. Oh, snap!

Hoisted on my own tie rod. :blush:

[Initech]

43. It cost me $9 to fill my Volvo in 1998.

Now it costs me nearly $60 to fill up my Altima. :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[NJmaverick]

47. ....

Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.



:evilgrin:

[Reverend_Smitty]

48. back in nineteen dickity two...

We had to say dickity cause the kaiser had stolen our word twenty. I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickity six miles....

[Oeditpus Rex]

53. ...

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[skygazer]

50. I used to have a photo showing 23 cents a gallon

My dad took the picture on the early 70's for something or other - it was a new station and was pure accident you could see the price.

I wish I still had it. My dad used to often ask for "a dollar's worth" of gas (back when people actually pumped it for you - and checked the oil - and washed the windshield).

[Oeditpus Rex]

54. I've gotten a dollar's worth a few times

And two bucks many times. Two bucks' worth of gas was a quarter-tank — enough to cruise South Main for hours on a Friday or Saturday night (which consisted mostly of being stopped in the line of cruisers that was backed up for blocks).

We used to cash in Coke bottles on Friday afternoons to get gas money. :)

Oh, and one time at school, a friend of mine asked if he could bum 50 cents for gas for his Honda 750. I said, "How far's that gonna get ya?" He said, "About 60 miles."

[csziggy]

60. Found some gas receipts a year or so ago

From the late 60s when I was still in high school and driving the 1958 Buick Special four door sedan my grandmother had bought new - 8 cylinder land barge. Gas was about 17-18 cents a gallon. Even so, my parents worried about how much I spent on gas. It turned out that it was using a lot of gas because there was a hole in the fuel pump that was spraying the engine compartment with gas. It was a wonder that thing didn't blow up!