Columnist
“There must be some mistake,” I said to the attendant, who didn’t appear to have a pistol in his hand. Instead, he nodded toward the gasoline pump. The evidence, sure enough, was on his side: 18.6 gallons of generic premium had been dispensed into my car at a rate of $2.68 a gallon.
I had been robbed fair and square. Still, the $50 sticker price was a shocker.
Perhaps it was the round number. Gas stations avoid whole numbers by using decimal points, such as $2.67.9 a gallon.
I remember the exact time when last hit by a $50-a-tank earthquake. It was Aug. 14, 1981. My family and I were packed and loaded for a 2,253-mile round trip from New York to Yellowstone Park. As I pulled into the gas lane, the attendant was rubbing his hands together at the sight of our rented recreational vehicle, a 1976 Dodge Coachman standing 11 feet high and measuring 22 feet bumper to bumper.
The seven-ton, orange-and-white aluminum RV had the aerodynamics of a house brick and the thirst of a caravan of camels. The crisis of the petrodollar was cresting back then as the Arab states finally had wrested control of their oil from European colonizers. This defeat drove U.S. gasoline prices to the unthinkable triple-digit level – that is to say, at least 99.9 cents a gallon.
My RV tank held 50 gallons of regular and drank them up seven miles at a time. Filling up the tank that first morning cost $52.50.
It was gas-pump deja vu last Monday. Instead of 50 gallons for an RV, however, it was 18.6 gallons for a 13-year-old Audi. Inflation notwithstanding, half a C-note struck me as an outrage for a tank of gas. Remember Chuck Berry’s song, “Too Much Monkey Business”? “Working in the filling station/Too many tasks/Wipe the windows/Check the tires/Check the oil/A dollar gas.” Chuck’s gas dollars would purchase roughly 26.8 percent of a gallon of 89-octane in today’s market.
The experts are reluctant to cite the Iraq War as a key factor in the price hike of crude oil. But the Bush administration openly stated its intention to get its fingers around the conquered oil fields in order to make the Iraqi people themselves pay for the U.S. slaughter of their fathers, wives and children. And it’s a sure bet that George W. Bush did not chase Saddam Hussein down that spider hole so that Condoleezza Rice could pay 40 percent more to gas up her Mercedes.
Instead, the experts maintain that the shock-and-awe prices at the gas pumps are due to increased global demands. These calm market specialists point to heavy users bellying up to the oil trough in China and India.
Much of the blame for runaway oil consumption is still laid at the garages of U.S. consumers. Looking out my back window, for example, I can spot two thirsty Hummers. They recall the New Yorker cartoon where a potential car buyer turns down a Hummer in a showroom because he has his mind dead-set on “a helicopter gunship.”
Are these Hummers and SUVs so essential to getting the kids off to the nursery?
Carol’s Journal starts on page A1 this week.