Date:         Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:56:06 -0500
Reply-To:     jwalker@BAMA.UA.EDU
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <jwalker@BAMA.UA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: gas prices? change quickly? vanagon content. :)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

>I was thinking about this as well, and I remember
>gas prices hitting $1.00 in 1979.
>So I looked it up...
>the national average was $0.86/gallon in 1979,
>$1.25/gallon in 1980.
>Ah... the good old days,
>you could buy gas with loose change and get
>enough to go surfing.


harrumph!! ;)

folks, it's all relative. depends on how old you are/were,
and how much money you had at the time.
look at car prices! look at house prices!
EVERYthing costs more now.
in 1904, a BUCKET of beer (bring your own bucket) cost a NICKEL!!!
but consider, in that year, the average hourly wage was a QUARTER!

in 1954 (which i remembers better), the first u.s. jet airline flew.
the boeing 707. the first nuclear submarine was launched.
the first color television transmission, the first heart-transplant,
the u.s. only 48 states, with a population of 163 million folks.

there were only 106,000+ motor vehicles registered
in the whole country, of these, passenger cars numbered
only 48,000+ ... and that was SIXTY percent of ALL the
passenger cars in the whole world.
many states did NOT require a test to obtain a driver's
license ...and no interstate.
the familiar white-on-red "STOP" sign? first time it showed up ...
had been black-on-yellow before that. :)

a new car averaged $2000. a vw beetle was like $1300.
a vw bus was like $1600.

and a gallon of gas? depends on where you were, but the
national average was ...<drum rollllll> ... TWENTY-ONE CENTS.
now, i recall a gas war at an intersection in our town, and
it got really nasty ... the Humble station (which is what Esso
was before they became Exxon) and the Sinclair stations got
down to TWELVE cents per gallon.

spare change for gas? heck, with my $0.75/hour ditch-digging
wages, i could take my $38/week, and fill up the beetle,
drive 30 miles with a date to the movies (big town, indoor
air conditioned theatre!! ... only hospitals and theatres had
air conditioning back then!), buy drinks and popcorn,
come back home and stop at the Dairy Queen for shakes and fries.
and all that ... on a ten-dollar bill.

but things weren't all great ...
tires were $12. but only lasted a year. if you were lucky.
you NEEDED to carry a good spare tire, cause you WERE gonna
have a flat ... just a matter of where and when.
and we were scared of polio ... closed the town
swimming pool one whole summer when two cases of polio showed
up in town. i nearly died of whooping cough when i was four
year old. doctors actually made house calls, back then.
later that year, we got tested with the 'new' polio vaccine.
1 out of every three houses did NOT have a bathtub. 1 out of
4 houses had no telephone ... we had one, but were on what they
called a 'party line' ... you and three or four neighbors
shared the same line; everybody had a separate ring ... one
ring was the Smith's, two rings was the Jones's, and three
rings was us ... and ol' lady Gaddis used to listen in on
EVERYbody's calls.
a newly built decent house was $20-23,000. really. new!
beer was up to $0.30/quart. in glass bottles.
a first-class postage stamp at the post office was three cents.

later on, in 1968, vw changed the vw bus ... and i hated the
new ones! til i got to vietnam and ran into a bunch of aussies
who used one as a transport, picking their folks up at the
airbase and bringing them back to their compound. and as
time went on, i got used to them .. the aussies AND the vw
bus. :) so when i got out of the army, first thing i did was
buy a brand new 1971 vw bus. blue and white, 4-speed.
$3025.95. tax, tag, and all.

then, in 1979, the vanagon came out. oh, crap! i was in love.
went about six times to the dealer ... they KNEW i was gonna
buy it. :( and so i did. $10,200.
and that was only NINE years from buying the 1971 bus.

so i kinda think we can all expect prices of everything to
go nowhere but UP. :(

and remember this:
all the food you eat, all the magazines and newspapers
you read, everything that you spend money on, involves
either gasoline or diesel fuel. even if it comes on a train
or plane, it takes fuel. and the more that fuel costs,
the more they are gonna pass that cost on to you.
i've never yet seen a company decide to make LESS profit
when they could raise prices and pass the higher costs
on to the customer.

if i were a betting man, i'd bet on much higher prices by
September ... higher prices on everything. including the
water that comes out of your faucets ... i used to work
for the water works (digging ditches, remember) and we used
a lot of gasoline and diesel fuel. and all our pipe and
supplies were delivered by trucks or trains, both of which
used a lot of diesel fuel.

unca joel
<the only reason i'm hanging around is
to see what the hell happens next!> ;)









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