Reminisce with more Yoostabees

It yoostabee that gas prices were so close to zero that they were basically irrelevant - or so it seemed.

I can remember the days after gas rationing ended in 1945 and I first started driving, when gasoline cost 15-20 cents a gallon. No one gave much thought to price differentials in those days, even though a Plymouth, say, would only get about 15 mpg in town and 17 on the road.

Yeah, I know, the economist purists out there would argue 1945's $0.20 is more like today's $2.00, but it's what our eyes see and our brain absorbs that matters.

Right now, my brain is absorbing that 87 octane at the corner gas station is $2.07 per, and my e-mail inbox is beginning to fill with complaints about prices. So let's review how buying gas yoostabee and how we got where we are today.

Full-service memories

For starters, it yoostabee buying gas was FULL SERVICE, meaning an attendant - often someone's older brother - not only filled your gas tank, but cleaned your windows, checked the water level in the radiator and pulled the dipstick.

Your fuel choice was the lower-priced "Regular" or the premium "Ethyl" which had - gasp - lead added to prevent knocking and improve performance. No one knew or cared what the octane was. Nor did the low-compression engines of the day; if they knocked, you Ethyled.

The typical gas station, and there seemed to be one on most every corner, also "yoosta" feature a two-bay service wing with either hydraulic lifts or pits to facilitate getting under the car for lubing, changing oil, fixing exhaust systems and connecting whatever else came loose on a car's underside.

Lubing? That was squeezing the handle of a grease gun to reduce the friction at sensitive points like steering connections. It yoostabee you had it done every 1000 miles. Likewise, oil changes. Every 1000 miles. That's how "gas stations" made money.

And there yoostabee lots of different gasoline brands to choose from. Standard Oil, for instance, long before had been broken up by anti-trusters into a collection of local companies. Standard Oil of New York was Mobil. Standard of New Jersey was ESSO (Get it? S-O). Now they're ExxonMobil.

SOHIO became Boron, which was swallowed by British Petroleum (BP) which last year merged with Amoco, formerly Standard of Indiana. Now BP is thirsting after Arco, once Atlantic Refining. " Good Gulf " is gone. The point is, the delight of choice and variety has diminished. (Confession: I own shares of both the surviving Big Fish.)

The self-serving era

Into the 1970s, though, there hadn't really been much new in how we bought gas. Then the first change appeared: SELF SERVE. I saw my first self-serve station coming off Interstate 80 to hit the old Oregon Trail in western Nebraska in 1972. What a concept! You could actually save a few pennies a gallon - from the then prevalent 30 - by pumping your own.

Self-serve as a money-saving concept didn't really impact motoring until the next chapter in this saga: the so-called Yom Kippur Arab-Israel War in the fall of 1973. Israel 's Arab neighbors elected to make a surprise strike on a traditional Jewish religious holiday, and got thoroughly thrashed for their disrespect. But the oil-producing Arabs didn't just lick their wounds. They sat down and imposed a DOUBLING of oil export prices from the Middle East .