I remember when it broke 30 cents at the Calso station, my father was astonished.<\/p>\n
Cheap gas, isn’t that what America was built on?\u00c2\u00a0 You bought a car and set out into the hinterlands.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, remember the Sunday drive?<\/p>\n
Well, that was before the first oil crisis, back in ’73, when they dropped the speed limit on the freeway to 55.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember driving home from college when the signs changed, the day before Thanksgiving.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed like WALKING!<\/p>\n
And the Mobil station in the heart of Middlebury…\u00c2\u00a0 You had to line up at 7 a.m., tough for a college student, and gas was over FORTY CENTS!\u00c2\u00a0 But I needed my fuel, to make it to the Snow Bowl.<\/p>\n
And that damn speed limit, it didn’t go up!\u00c2\u00a0 I got stopped for speeding in NEVADA!\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no speed limit in Nevada…\u00c2\u00a0 But starting in ’73 there was.\u00c2\u00a0 And I got busted for 70+ on the last day of April ’75.\u00c2\u00a0 Just try driving from Salt Lake to Reno at 55…you might not GET THERE!<\/p>\n
And then there was the second crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 When gas broke a buck, and the pumps weren’t prepared.\u00c2\u00a0 At so many stations you had to DOUBLE the amount.\u00c2\u00a0 Or they sold it by the liter, to make you think you were getting a deal.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
I mean I’m cruising down Sunset Boulevard, towards the freeway, in Brentwood.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m thinking about all the obligations I have the next day.\u00c2\u00a0 The manual says not to run down the tank, if the light comes on it fucks up the turbo.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I decide to pull into the Chevron at Barrington.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
I paid $3.79 a gallon.<\/p>\n
Now my car doesn’t take much gas, but it’s got to be super.<\/p>\n
And despite its size, my car drinks rather than sips.\u00c2\u00a0 But can I really complain?\u00c2\u00a0 I got it for $9500 off.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was the second time I was filling up this week.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, I had to fit GAS into my budget!<\/p>\n
You never thought about gas.\u00c2\u00a0 But now my monthly bill is the size of a car payment.\u00c2\u00a0 And, I’m not about to stop driving, I can afford it, but…<\/p>\n
God, do I really want to figure the price of gas into my comings and goings?<\/p>\n
Imagine shopping for a CD.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you get a deal, you pay $12.99.\u00c2\u00a0 But, you could blow a couple of bucks in gas!\u00c2\u00a0 God, Internet shopping never looked so good.<\/p>\n
And my little sister.\u00c2\u00a0 She wanted to drive to her college reunion.\u00c2\u00a0 Had she checked the price of gas?\u00c2\u00a0 She HAD to fly.<\/p>\n
And I’m driving home from KLSX last night.\u00c2\u00a0 And that station at Fairfax and Olympic…\u00c2\u00a0 Super was $4.09.\u00c2\u00a0 The price was positively EUROPEAN!<\/p>\n
Now they cope with this over there by driving tiny little cars.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m down with that.\u00c2\u00a0 They seem to know gasoline is a precious resource.\u00c2\u00a0 But over here, people are still buying SUVs.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe crossovers, but they don’t get spectacular mileage either.\u00c2\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n
And it turns out that station at Barrington and Sunset wasn’t that far out of line.\u00c2\u00a0 My own Shell was selling hi-test for $3.63.<\/p>\n
But what got me writing this was the 76 station two blocks from my house.\u00c2\u00a0 $3.95!<\/p>\n
We’ve got a crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 Our whole country’s in a crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 But our government tells us everything’s copacetic.\u00c2\u00a0 That we should just mind our own business.<\/p>\n
But Toyota sold more cars than GM.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’re dependent on foreign oil.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody wants their old lifestyle, which is causing 84 degree heat on May 7th in Santa Monica, which I’ve never ever seen before.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, in the San Fernando Valley it’s over 100!\u00c2\u00a0 What’s it going to be like in the middle of summer?<\/p>\n
But Johnny and Jo Parent want to drive a tank to protect their progeny, even though this behemoth is prone to flipping over.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if they hit me, I’m toast.<\/p>\n
I don’t mind paying four bucks a gallon if we’re solving the problem.\u00c2\u00a0 But we’re NOT!<\/p>\n
And can you trust Exxon Mobil?\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, look at the dude who ran BP.\u00c2\u00a0 Workers died at one of their refineries in Texas because they were cutting costs.<\/p>\n
Tax gas as an incentive to decrease consumption.\u00c2\u00a0 Tax gas guzzlers.\u00c2\u00a0 Come up with alternative fuels.\u00c2\u00a0 Take a lesson from Brazil, which has become oil independent.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, we can’t use sugar in our ethanol because we’ve got to bend to the CORN lobby.<\/p>\n
I guess what frustrates me is the lack of confidence.\u00c2\u00a0 You used to believe the government would do the right thing, however slow the wheels turned.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, those in D.C. are just tools of corporations run by people who want that gargantuan lifestyle.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes one feel powerless.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes one just want to get behind the wheel, crank up the stereo and DRIVE!<\/p>\n
But that might not be an option soon, that might just be too expensive!\u00c2\u00a0 What do you want to do, go out to eat or go for a drive?\u00c2\u00a0 A movie or a cruise to the bluffs?\u00c2\u00a0 I used to just fill up the tank without thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 Those days are done.<\/p>\n
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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?\u00c2\u00a0 You bought a car and set out into the hinterlands.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, remember the Sunday drive? Well, that was before the first oil crisis, back in ’73, when they dropped the speed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-cF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}