I remember when it broke 30 cents at the Calso station, my father was astonished.

Cheap gas, isn’t that what America was built on?  You bought a car and set out into the hinterlands.  Hell, remember the Sunday drive?

Well, that was before the first oil crisis, back in ’73, when they dropped the speed limit on the freeway to 55.  I remember driving home from college when the signs changed, the day before Thanksgiving.  You’d be cruising along at 70, since 65 meant 70, and then a replaced sign would appear and you’d slow down to 55, since they said there would be strict enforcement.  It seemed like WALKING!

And the Mobil station in the heart of Middlebury…  You had to line up at 7 a.m., tough for a college student, and gas was over FORTY CENTS!  But I needed my fuel, to make it to the Snow Bowl.

And that damn speed limit, it didn’t go up!  I got stopped for speeding in NEVADA!  There’s no speed limit in Nevada…  But starting in ’73 there was.  And I got busted for 70+ on the last day of April ’75.  Just try driving from Salt Lake to Reno at 55…you might not GET THERE!

And then there was the second crisis.  When gas broke a buck, and the pumps weren’t prepared.  At so many stations you had to DOUBLE the amount.  Or they sold it by the liter, to make you think you were getting a deal.

And since then, they raised the speed limit back up to 65, and prices have waxed and waned, but now…they’ve gone positively STRATOSPHERIC!

I mean I’m cruising down Sunset Boulevard, towards the freeway, in Brentwood.  And I’m thinking about all the obligations I have the next day.  The manual says not to run down the tank, if the light comes on it fucks up the turbo.  So, I decide to pull into the Chevron at Barrington.  Oh, I contemplate waiting until morning, to fill up at my favorite Shell station, but I didn’t want an extra stop, I had the time now.  Oh, I debated cruising down to San Vicente for a cheaper price, but so many of the stations have disappeared, and the ones that remain aren’t too cheap either.

I paid $3.79 a gallon.

Now my car doesn’t take much gas, but it’s got to be super.

And despite its size, my car drinks rather than sips.  But can I really complain?  I got it for $9500 off.  But this was the second time I was filling up this week.  Suddenly, I had to fit GAS into my budget!

You never thought about gas.  But now my monthly bill is the size of a car payment.  And, I’m not about to stop driving, I can afford it, but…

God, do I really want to figure the price of gas into my comings and goings?

Imagine shopping for a CD.  Maybe you get a deal, you pay $12.99.  But, you could blow a couple of bucks in gas!  God, Internet shopping never looked so good.

And my little sister.  She wanted to drive to her college reunion.  Had she checked the price of gas?  She HAD to fly.

And I’m driving home from KLSX last night.  And that station at Fairfax and Olympic…  Super was $4.09.  The price was positively EUROPEAN!

Now they cope with this over there by driving tiny little cars.  I’m down with that.  They seem to know gasoline is a precious resource.  But over here, people are still buying SUVs.  Maybe crossovers, but they don’t get spectacular mileage either.  I mean I see people in new Range Rovers, or Suburbans, or LandCruisers, and I say what kind of fucked up country do we live in where some people can be so rich that they can pay poor people’s rent to fill up their cars?

And it turns out that station at Barrington and Sunset wasn’t that far out of line.  My own Shell was selling hi-test for $3.63.

But what got me writing this was the 76 station two blocks from my house.  $3.95!

We’ve got a crisis.  Our whole country’s in a crisis.  But our government tells us everything’s copacetic.  That we should just mind our own business.

But Toyota sold more cars than GM.  And we’re dependent on foreign oil.  Everybody wants their old lifestyle, which is causing 84 degree heat on May 7th in Santa Monica, which I’ve never ever seen before.  Hell, in the San Fernando Valley it’s over 100!  What’s it going to be like in the middle of summer?

But Johnny and Jo Parent want to drive a tank to protect their progeny, even though this behemoth is prone to flipping over.  And, if they hit me, I’m toast.

I don’t mind paying four bucks a gallon if we’re solving the problem.  But we’re NOT!

And can you trust Exxon Mobil?  Hell, look at the dude who ran BP.  Workers died at one of their refineries in Texas because they were cutting costs.

Tax gas as an incentive to decrease consumption.  Tax gas guzzlers.  Come up with alternative fuels.  Take a lesson from Brazil, which has become oil independent.  Then again, we can’t use sugar in our ethanol because we’ve got to bend to the CORN lobby.

I guess what frustrates me is the lack of confidence.  You used to believe the government would do the right thing, however slow the wheels turned.  Now, those in D.C. are just tools of corporations run by people who want that gargantuan lifestyle.  Makes one feel powerless.  Makes one just want to get behind the wheel, crank up the stereo and DRIVE!

But that might not be an option soon, that might just be too expensive!  What do you want to do, go out to eat or go for a drive?  A movie or a cruise to the bluffs?  I used to just fill up the tank without thinking.  Those days are done.