Who remembers buying gasoline for under a dollar a gallon?

[another_liberal]

Everyone might be able to say they do before long. Prices like that may soon be on their way back to a pump near you!

Oil plummet: Crude dives below $45 for first time since 2009


Brent crude and WTI have continued their headlong plunge in early trading Tuesday, hitting record six-year lows. Brent crude futures fell 2.64 percent to $46.12 in trading on London’s ICE exchange, while WTI dropped by 2.41 percent, plunging below $45 to $44.96 (10:00 MSK). Brent and WTI prices are now at their lowest levels since spring 2009.

The ruble was quick to react to the news, losing more than 2 percent in early trading on the Moscow Stock Exchange. The Russian currency was trading at 64.93 to the dollar and 76.94 to the euro at 11:00 am local time.

On Tuesday, UAE Oil Minister Suhail Mohammed Faraj Al Mazroui said OPEC was no longer able to “protect” oil prices. “OPEC cannot continue protecting a certain price. That is not the only aim of OPEC,” he said at a Gulf Intelligence energy event in Abu Dhabi. “We are concerned about the balance of the market, but we cannot be the only party that is responsible to balance the market,” Al Mazroui said.

Mazouri said the UAE was not planning to alter its output, adding that all oil producers should demonstrate awareness of global economic development and regulate their production accordingly. "The key factor of hydrocarbon overproduction has become the extraction of shale oil,” he said. “And this should be corrected."

(snip)


Read more at: http://rt.com/business/222067-oil-record-drop-trading/

[B Calm]

1. I remember paying 19.9 cents per gallon.

[another_liberal]

2. Ah yes . . . those good old gas wars!

The old back-and-forth price cuts to try and maintain the cheapest price in town. I haven't seen one of those since the early Seventies.

[B Calm]

3. Exactly! I think the average price was around 25 cents, but then a gas war would happen

and that's how I bought it for 19 cents. Mid to late 60's. . .

[pinboy3niner]

4. Not to mention free dishware or glassware with fill-up

Courtesy of Putin. Just kidding, just kidding! I couldn't help myself.

[B Calm]

5. I do remember the stamps, lol. Damn are we old or what?

[pinboy3niner]

6. At least we still remember, lol

Enjoying the nostalgia trips while we can still have them.

[unblock]

8. greenstamps! omg! yes!

yes, we *are* old!

[riqster]

10. I may have grown old, but damned if I'll grow up.

[Jackpine Radical]

152. I entirely avoided my midlife crisis

by refusing to leave adolescence.

[riqster]

156. I had a glorious and extended misspent youth.

Casual sex, chemicals, rock and roll, wilderness adventure, travel, cool vehicles. Who needs a midlife crisis to do all that shit? I did it in the 60's and 70's when I was young enough to enjoy it (and when some were not yet lethal).

Now I limit my intake of such joys, am selective with some and have replaced others.

[pinboy3niner]

12. Lawn chairs and TV trays, lol

I think that's what most of us got with our S&H Green stamps, lol. Perfect for TV dinners in front of the boob tube.

[GGJohn]

48. OMG, you just brought back long suppressed memories.

S&H Green Stamps and the cards.
Thanks a lot, back to therapy for me.

[pinboy3niner]

50. Therapy? Are you crazy?

Do you know how many Green Stamps that costs?





...

[2naSalit]

89. Indeed!!

[Jim Beard]

145. You can get a pot holder for that many S&H Green Stamps

Whats in the rest of the catalog.

[Jackpine Radical]

158. When you said pot holder, I thought you meant…

[B Calm]

13. Ha ha, I couldn't remember the name. Yep it was Green Stamps.

[KansDem]

51. Don't forget Blue Chip Stamps

We collected both!

[RebelOne]

83. Yes, I remember S&H green stamps.

I got a lot of good stuff with them. I also collected yellow stamps, but I don't remember where I got them. I think it was at the grocery store.

[amandabeech]

118. Mom got some unbreakable melamine dinner ware

to replace the stoneware that was ending up in pieces too often. Bad amanda!

Our "good" dinnerware was Fostoria crystal. So very '50s and she still has it. I was not allowed to handle it at all until I was 12, so it survived.

[pangaia]

153. And odd even plate days.

[femmocrat]

37. I still have some of those glasses!

They were pretty nice.

[pinboy3niner]

42. My family's good china was the dinnerware from boxes of DUZ detergent

I'll never forget that wheat pattern. It was actually a pretty elegant and classy design for something that came free out of a box of soap.

[amandabeech]

119. Wheat designs were very popular in the '50s.

My mom has some drinking glasses that are etched with a wheat design. They are '50s vintage and very lovely. They'd go great with your plates!

[AlinPA]

161. OMG! I remember that! Thanks for the post.

[Tanuki]

171. Fun fact: those wheat dishes were made by the Homer Laughlin china company in West Virginia

(my home state). This is the same company that makes the brightly colored Fiestaware, and all their products are still manufactured in the U.S. I, too, fondly remember eating many a meal on our wheat plates!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Laughlin_China_Company

[eridani]

136. And S&H Green Stamps! Are we dating ourselves or what? n/t

[another_liberal]

7. What gets to me is that big oil companies must still be making money at under two dollars . . .

Otherwise they wouldn't still be selling it to us, right? So why did our government allow them to rig the price up to four a gallon?

We've been getting screwed worse than we thought, and for years!

[House of Roberts]

22. Amazing how low it goes with the speculators out of the market.

Cut out the Wall Street middle men, bidding up the price, and that's what's left.

[RebelOne]

81. I remember way back in the early '50s when I was a teenager,

the price was about 15 cents or less for a gallon. Yes, I am old.

A guy that I was dating pulled up a gas station to fill up his car and the price was 35 cents a gallon. He drove off in disgust and said he was not going to pay that high price.

[2banon]

105. where'dya live? I paid 10 cents a gal. in the early 60's. (North Carolina)

[OLDMADAM]

164. Price wars were crazy in the 50's

We had a 4 corner price war in my neighborhood in Chicago. when it got to .08 a gal.. Ha!

[2banon]

173. I'd almost swear remembering .08 a gallon..

of course I wasn't driving and having my car serviced for fill-ups until the late 60's .. but i do remember the service everybody got whether it was a fill-up or just a couple of gallons, same service. automatically they pumped the gas, wiped/cleaned the windshields, and checked the oil, and always asked if we wanted the air in the tires checked too, or anything else for that matter. Full service always. Until the shortage/embargo... when the embargo ended, we never returned to full service mode, which I never understood.

[RebelOne]

166. I lived in Miami, FL where everything is much higher. n/t

[JDPriestly]

139. I remember that too.

[2naSalit]

88. That's when I

started driving a car and paying a whopping $0.30/gal. I do recall my parents being indignant about having to pay $0.27 (OMG! Right?) just before getting on the Mass. Turnpike north of Boston. And the dishes and steak knives and the stamps!!

Come to think about it, I used to get three or four books' worth of those stamps when I would fill up the 300gal. tanks on the truck! Got some nifty toys and appliances with those. Since I was always on the road, I filled up the tanks about three or four times a week.

And I do feel old.

[MrMickeysMom]

125. So do I...

Amazing, isn't it? I'm a boomer, but not that old…

[cantbeserious]

128. Less Than 10 Cents Per Gallon - Houston TX - Early 60s

eom

[OLDMADAM]

163. OMG.. Green Stamps, free towels and face clothes in soap, I remember it well..

We would each get a piece of flatware or china with a ticket at the theater..

[napi21]

138. Yep! I remember watching those prices and thinking"Yea, I can afford to put gas in a car when I buy

one. I was 18yo and just got my first job.

Of course I also remember the gas lines when you could only buy gas on certain days.

I realize Wall Street and the oil producers like Texas, Russia, etc. hate what's going on now, I happen to LIKE the $1.89 gas.

[ProfessorGAC]

146. Not That Low

But when i started driving it was around 39 cents.

When gas prices spiked suddenly in the mid-70's, gas finally went over a buck. When that happened, a lot of the pumps didn't have a third digit build in for the price per gallon.

So, they had to regear thousands of pumps to flip the dials every half gallon, or they would just post a sign on the pump saying that the gas wasn't 51 cents but twice that. So if the pump said $5, you owed $10.
GAC

[HockeyMom]

9. 97 cents in Northern NJ in late 90s

Not THAT long ago. Lived in NY but we filled up in NJ when we took daughter to hockey games there.

[nitpicker]

17. Ditto in Prince William VA

Sometime around 97-98, a Wawa was down to 68 cents during a price war ((and probably a promotion to get people into their mini-mart)). But other places were under a dollar too.

[alcibiades_mystery]

46. Yup. I paid 95 cents a gallon somewhere in Montana when I was driving across country in 1998

I remember it distinctly because it was somewhat rare to find gas for under a dollar. But it was usually like 1.19 a gallon.

[Raine1967]

131. Thanks Bill Clinton!

Another Dem president…

[rogerashton]

11. Cruising for beer and girls --

not that the episcopal preacher's kid, his buddy and I ever managed to pick up any girls! -- somebody was expected to put a dollar's worth in the tank to keep us cruising for the night.

[pinboy3niner]

18. We'd all chip in our small change to buy a gallon or two

So we could keep cruisin' that boulevard. For many of us, it WAS the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Or at least it felt like it some nights.

[Xipe Totec]

14. This should be making all other products cheaper to produce and transport,

So we should see the price of manufactured goods drop as well, right?

Companies wouldn't possibly pocket the extra cash, right? More money for everyone, right?

... right?

... hellooooooo!


... sigh.

[another_liberal]

31. "Nothing to see here folks, just move alone . . ."

"Nothing to see here . . ."


(sigh)

[treestar]

38. Why not?

It could happen. People always look for bargains, and prices get lowered there - there were the gas wars when it was really cheap, the station down the street would lower the price to get the customers. Supply and demand does work both ways.

[Xipe Totec]

41. I'm not talking about gas, I'm talking about goods

Things made of plastic, which comes from oil.

Things that get transported on trucks, like watermelons.

Things like bread which needs to be baked and therefor consumes energy.

The cost of goods is always in some way affected by the price of oil. Sometimes it is the biggest cost component.

Yet, I'm not seeing the price of anything besides gas dropping.

Are you seeing any price drop?

Besides gas?

[treestar]

44. It could take a while, but these prices would drop

there's always the contest for customers.

[Xipe Totec]

86. That's the theory. The reality is that company profits rise instead.

Competition is a joke.

[Downwinder]

15. 5 gal. of gas for 1 hour min. wage labor.

or 5 loaves of bread for $1.00

[Scuba]

16. I remember 22 cents a gallon and they gave you free dishes, check your oil, cleaned your windshield.

[B Calm]

19. In 1969 there was a gas station in Mayport, Florida that had girls in bikini's

pumping gas and washing windshields. Since it was right outside of the Newport Naval Station, trust me it was always busy!

[treestar]

36. As a kid I remember the things they'd give you

They had a doll collection - you got one doll each time. They were from around the world. We collected all ten or twelve or whatever it was. Each one was dressed up in national costume, Sweden, Germany, Spain, etc. Come to think of it they were all European, not from around the world.

[John1956PA]

20. I remember the "Oil Crisis" of October 1973 when the price rose to 50 cents per gallon.

It was the first time in the 1970s that vehicles waited in long lines at service stations. The second time would be in 1979.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/10/15/234771573/the-1973-arab-oil-embargo-the-old-rules-no-longer-apply

From the Wikipedia acticle:

[amandabeech]

120. By December, it was $0.75 in southeast Michigan if you could find it.

I was in college at U-Mich, which has finals before Christmas break. I finished my last final on a Saturday afternoon, and was looking to leave on Sunday--my drive was 4 hours at 55 mph! But there was no gas station open on Sunday that I could find because Sunday gas sales were discouraged. I had to wait till Monday for my journey, which seemed like an eternity!


When I started driving, it was $0.40, but I remember when it was $0.29.

[GreatGazoo]

21. 39.9 cents in 1975, full service (only), wipe windows and check oil

[FSogol]

30. I remember gas at 39.9 also because the 9/10th always annoyed me. By the time I started

driving, gas was 89.9

[madokie]

23. Seen it sell for 9 cents a gallon

personally bought gas for 15 cents a gallon. Pumped a few thousand gallons for from 21 to 31 cents a gallon.

Hell I must be getting old, huh

[pinboy3niner]

27. Now hose tellin' war stories?

My best friend in HS worked at his dad's gas station--and it was hard work! More power to ya, brother!

[Mugu]

110. You have a couple of years on me.

The first tank of gas that I bought was $19.9 a gallon for my 57 Chevy.

Yes, we're getting old.

[LWolf]

24. Gas was .49 when I was in high school,

and in the .35 range shortly before that. And by my senior year, we were waiting in lines around the block hoping to fill up before the station literally ran out of gas.

While I enjoy lower gas prices, I actually don't want to go back to the times when it was okay to drive big gas guzzlers because gas was cheap. I don't want cheap gas to be a rationalization for continuing to pollute air and heat up the planet.

[cwydro]

25. I do.

And they pumped it for you. Many times they gave away gifts too.

Sigh.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

26. cheapest I recall is $.68/gal

sometime in the late 90's...

sP

[GP6971]

28. 28.9 in the mid and late 60s. n/t

[Jim Beard]

92. 28.9 for "Good Gulf" gasoling in the mid 1960's

Cheap. minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. Cocca cola 10cents

[notadmblnd]

29. in 1973 gas was a round 40 cents a gallon

I remember it in the 60's for as little as 26 cents. I remember in the 90's it was around 1.30

[n2doc]

32. I paid .69 c a gallon in Texas in 1999. Then we elected a Texas oilman. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

33. Dec. 1963.....25 cents a gallon

Have no idea of gas prices before then, because I never drove a car, so that was not my focus.

I do remembering driving thru Texas that Dec., and buying a HUGE hamburger for 25 cents, plus filling the car at 25 cents a gallon.
The price co-incidence was what stuck in my mind.
Was very impressed at the size of the take out hamburger.

[RoverSuswade]

34. I think it was 19 cents a gallon in 1950.

Cigarettes were 20 cents a pack. I could buy them at the corner grocery store for my mom (I was 9). You could lay 20 items on the counter and the grocer would just add everything up in his head.

[another_liberal]

94. I bought my comic books at a little country store . . .

The cashier was a tiny old woman who always wore flower-print dresses, and always figured your bill on scrap of paper.

[treestar]

35. I remember mom trying to find the cheapest gas

She drove around looking for it. Which seems a bit dumb, but in those days it was cheap. The prices were 30 or 31 cents per gallon and we stopped to fill up where it was 29 cents per gallon - that was the cheapest we found.

I'm approximating it was the late 60s, when I'd be old enough to recall this incident and it could have been that cheap.

[Man from Pickens]

39. I saw $1.79 gas this morning

I was stunned, almost took a picture, then I realized that we can expect these prices to stick around for a while.

[olddots]

40. I remember gas prices compared to minimum wages

That comparison tells a sad tale .

[Agschmid]

43. I remember .99! Let the good times roll...

And the drive for fuel efficiency to fail.

[oberliner]

45. I remember it always being a buck and change

When it started to hit $2 in some places, that seemed really strange. Then there was that quick climb up until the 4's and I thought we'd never see 2 again. Crazy what is happening now - but I love it personally!

[LannyDeVaney]

47. Right as it approached $1 ...

some places started posting the 1/2 gallon price because they didn't have anything to show 3 digits. Remember that?

[another_liberal]

95. Yeah, they did!

I had heard what the price of gas was in Europe at the time, but it was still hard to imagine. I got in arguments with friends who just couldn't believe they would ever have to pay a full dollar a gallon.

[johnsolaris]

49. good old days

Hi,

I paid 12 cents a gallon back when I started college. The gas stations in town were having a price war, remember those, and I could fill up my car for $2. When the price war ended, the price went up to 18 cent a gallon. It is nice to remember the good old days.

[fredamae]

52. $0.4 Cents pg

in the mid-1950's....not me, but my parents did during a local "gas war"...PLUS we got our oil, air pressure and radiators checked, our windshields washed And a free drink glass or a box of Jell-O or a "Jewel Toned" Aluminum Glass fill with Cottage Cheese or a Can of Campbells Soup etc with every fill.

[KansDem]

53. I think the lowest I saw was 27 cents a gallon...

Late '60s.

I remember thinking it would never get any higher than 36 cents a gallon!

If a friend drove, we would chip in a couple of quarters, maybe a buck, for gas...

[Beach Rat]

54. I remember low prices clearly.

Back pre-arab oil embargo in the 70's when under .50 was the norm. I also remember paying less than a dollar and it wasn't that long ago. I remember paying .98 at Bulldog gas on Route 38 in Mount Holly, NJ in 2000. I was from out of the area and didn't notice how low the price was. I asked for $20 worth and the car filled up on only $15.

[Historic NY]

55. Ah the old days....

we even thought 39.9 was high.

[LiberalArkie]

56. I remember my dad telling us that we could not afford to go on vacation

because gas was up to 25 cents a gallon.

[Art_from_Ark]

160. We never went on vacation no matter how low gas was

It was a special treat just to go for a drive in the countryside around Fayetteville for an hour or so. It was a super special treat when my uncle came down for a visit, since he would sometimes take us all the way down to Mountainburg, or even way over to Eureka Springs.

Ah, the good ol' days.

[LiberalArkie]

167. It was about the same, vacation = weekend at Heber Springs or such

Still a long drive from El Dorado. To me as an asthmatic child, getting away from the chemical plants to clean air was fantastic.

[Art_from_Ark]

168. Ah, the Arkansas Oil Patch

I've only been down there once, on a bicycle at that, back in the '70s. I saw lots of oil derricks, especially around Smackover, and the air wasn't the greatest. The odor I remember most from that area was a strong paper mill smell.

[CountAllVotes]

57. Raises hand

I remember the day you could put $1.00 worth of gasoline in your car (my girlfriend had an old Chevy Impala -- a real gas hog that thing was!) and you could drive around all night!

Those were the days! I actually had a life at one time.

[meaculpa2011]

58. I remember gas at 22.9 cents in Brooklyn, but...

it was 39.9 cents in Manhattan.

Price wars would cause fluctuations of a few cents, then they started giving away steak knives and sports logo glasses with a fill-up.

I still have a few NY Mets glasses in the attic.

[Douglas Carpenter]

59. I remember the first time I saw gasoline for $1.00 - that was at a remote place - Lucia, Calirornia

a tiny speck of a town on Highway 1 deep into Big Sur - That would have been September 1977.

When I got my first car at 16 in 1971 gasoline was about 35 cents a gallon.

[another_liberal]

96. Out of the way places and stations right off Interstate highway were first to break a dollar . . .

At least where I was at the time.

[Fearless]

60. 0.89/gal in 2007.

I remember the first tanks of gas I put in my new car (at the time) cost me $11.

[Autumn]

61. 16 cents a gallon. Loved those gas wars

that was in early 70 late 69.

[Kablooie]

62. 29 cents at Arco was the cheapest when I had my first car.

Richfield had recently become Arco.
They were the first where you had to pump your own gas.

Everywhere else cost a little more but you could remain sitting in your car.
And remember them cleaning the windshield and checking the oil every time you got gas.
Some places even had guys in white uniforms with little white caps.

[gblady]

63. I remember 25 cents.....

College years.....gas=25 cents a gallon, bread=25 cents per loaf, and hamburger=25 cents per pound.

I remember people speculating in those years that one day bread would cost over one dollar per loaf and we thought they were nuts.....sigh!

[Art_from_Ark]

170. Back in the late '80s, Bu$h Sr.

thought that $19 was a reasonable price for a loaf of bread

[fizzgig]

64. it was around 95 cents when i got my license in 97

and we paid less than 90 cents driving from CO to IL in 98 or 99.

[tularetom]

65. 18.9 cents a gallon outside Ft Benning GA in 1961 or 62

[former9thward]

66. It was 2 cents a gallon at gas stations in Iraq in 2003-4.

American equivalent from the Iraqi dinar. Of course that was government subsidized. I don't know what the 'real' price was.

[another_liberal]

93. The "real price" was having to be in Iraq to buy it . . .

That had to have made it expensive.

[kimbutgar]

67. When I first learned how to drive it was 49 cents a gallon.

It cost $7 to fill up my 66 mustang.

[lpbk2713]

68. 22 - 24 cents a gal when I bought my first car around 1960.

The attendant or owner would always pump it and usually offer to check under the hood and clean the windshield. Some times there were freebies like drinking glasses or dish towels. I didn't see pumping your own gas until several years later. That started with the cut-rate gas stations, not the name brand stations.

[MineralMan]

69. Sure. It was about 25 cents a gallon when I was in high school,

but that was back in the early 1960s. Lots of stuff was cheaper like that. I could take my girlfriend to a movie and get burgers and Cokes and still get change from a $5 bill, back then, too. Inflation makes all these numbers sort of meaningless really. Around the same time, you could get a decent house for $15,000 and a new car for $2000, too. Everything today costs ten times what it did then, except maybe television sets.

We can't just look at prices from the past. They make no sense, given inflation.

[Scruffy Rumbler]

70. Remember when the pumps weren't designed to handle any price over $.99?

I was with my mother when we stopped one time. She didn't see the sign that said the price shown was for 1/2 gallon. She was very pissed when she went to pay and it was twice as much. It blew her very limited budget until next payday. And of course, this was NY. I am there now and the price is still about $2.69 here.

[PasadenaTrudy]

71. It was in the 50-60 cents range when I was growing up n/t

[dilby]

72. What is going on with the price of gas?

Ten years ago everyone was talking about peak oil with the prediction we were running out of the resource. Today it seems there is more oil than we need and the market is being flooded with cheap oil.

[Arkansas Granny]

73. Back in the mid 60's, I remember gas being 15.9 cents per gallon.

[hunter]

74. Here's the deal: I was making $8 to $10 an hour and gas was sixty cents a gallon.

This was for semi-skilled heavy labor, and yeah, it was sexist and women were not accepted in that work. Women were getting paid $5 to $8 for less laborious but equivalently skilled work.

My rent for a crappy shared apartment in 1979 was $85.

I rarely thought about the price of gasoline then, especially since I had a smaller car that got 25 miles per gallon, even when I drove it like young men tend to do.

Fast forward to today, those same semi-skilled labor jobs pays $10 to $12 an hour, and many of the workers are not young guys moving on up in the world, they are often older guys who hurt all the time, eat a handful of ibuprofen or naproxen in the morning, and drink three tall ones when they get home. And the rents they pay on their apartments is usurious.

[another_liberal]

77. Ten bucks an hour was a small fortune in the Seventies . . .

At least for a working person it was.

[hunter]

80. Wages varied wildly across the nation, if I recall.

In 1979 minimum wage in California was $2.90, in Georgia it was $1.23, and some states had no minimum wage.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/stateMinWageHis.htm

My first job out of high school (a few years before 1979) with no benefits, no security, no fixed hours, paid $5 an hour and I recall that was pretty common in our rapidly developing area of Southern California.

[Gothmog]

75. I remember this also

I am old

[jeff47]

76. Keep inflation in mind. 40 cents in 1965 is $3 in 2014 just by inflation.

Handy tool if you want to eliminate inflation from your comparisons: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

That $5/hour job in 1965 is about $37/hour in 2014.

[another_liberal]

98. The sad thing is that many Americans only make a little more than $5/hour now . . .

And they still have to pay today's prices for gasoline.

[jeff47]

111. Exactly.

Kinda takes the wind of out the sails of the "Those lazy kids today" crowd.

Today's federal minimum wage is $0.97/hr in 1965.

[Newsjock]

78. Old TV shows are great for this kind of thing

[upaloopa]

79. In the early 70's I bought gas for $.25 a gallon.

[benld74]

82. 25 cents 1976

[libdem4life]

84. Waited in a block long line to fill up my brand new 1969 MG Midget for $2.50...went 400 miles plus

on one tank. Outside my apartment window I observed "gas wars", 25 cents, give or take, because there was one on each of the four corners. It was hilarious. Every day, someone would be out there changing up the sign.

But then that's the same place I wandered out of bed during the night and thought I was dreaming. My car was in front of the apartment building and they were moving a house down the street. Came really close and I thought it would be funny to make an insurance claim..."stopped, parked car hit by moving house".

Off topic, just an old, funny memory...for the old folks.

[another_liberal]

103. My brother-in-law had an MG then. It was fun to drive . . .

When the damn thing started!

[libdem4life]

147. Absolutely...especially with the top down...

...until an old lady pulled out in front of me while I was going maybe 35 per hour, and it folded up like a soda or beer can. Mine never got old enough to need repairs.

[another_liberal]

148. Wow!

They are not the car to have a wreck in, that's when one pays for the lightness of handling.

[libdem4life]

149. Yeah, what can a 19 year old afford? Now it's Toyotas all the way. Two others...not my

fault, truly (Karma, I guess) and just minor injuries. My son says I drive like an old lady. I tell him thank you...and after he had a big scare, so does he. Boy, this really got off subject...hey, thanks for the reply anyway.

[Kelvin Mace]

85. Adjusted for inflation

gasoline is about where it was in 1973 before the OPEC embargo, $2 a gallon.

[NaturalHigh]

87. The cheapest I remember paying is 79 cents.

Ah, the good old days of filling up my Trans-Am for twelve dollars and cruising all weekend.

[Politicalboi]

90. In the 60's I remember seeing

29 cents a gallon. When I started driving in 1977, it was 48 cents.

[ileus]

91. I remember paying .73 in 88.

[TeeYiYi]

97. Me...

At less than 50 cents per,... gas and smokes were about the same price.
Good times.

TYY

[LiberalEsto]

99. 25 cents a gallon, and a free glass tumbler

in a hideous shade of brownish gold or avocado green. And a pack of Camels was a quarter, back when I used to smoke. 1969. New Jersey.

[another_liberal]

100. Sinclair stations used to give all the kids in the car green plastic Brontosaurus toys . . .

Known as Apatosaurus today, I guess it's still their company logo.

[LiberalEsto]

116. I vaguely remember those. Remember the Esso tiger tails?

Put a tiger in your tank!

[ailsagirl]

101. I remember when bread was 49 cents a loaf

And when Hershey bars were 5 cents

And I'm not that old!!

[Go Vols]

102. Its been below a buck a gallon

most of my life.

[another_liberal]

109. Where in motorist heaven have you lived?

[2banon]

104. 10 cents a gallon back in early sixties in the south.

I know because I needed a dime to be able to fill up the gallon gas jug for the lawn mower.

[SamKnause]

106. Mid 1970's.

The was a gas war between the stations.

.27 per gallon.

Ohio.

[Jim Beard]

107. I remember when we were saying

"they are going to get it up to 50 cents a gallon" and then later we were saying, "they are going to get it up to a dollar a gallon"

[csziggy]

108. When my parents cleared out their old house, they found gas receipts

From when I had a car in high school - 14 to 17 cents a gallon back in the late 1960s.

No wonder they didn't worry about giving me my grandmother's old Buick Special land barge with a huge V8 engine to drive to school and back. They did complain at one point about how much gas I was using, asked if I was taking friends on drives after school. I wasn't - and when I did extra driving, I bought gas out of my own pocket and didn't use their account.

I ran out of gas one day and when a friend tried to prime the carbuerator and told me to pump the pedal it sprayed gas all over him. It turned out that the fuel pump diaphragm had a hole in it. Once we got that fixed, the gas usage went way way down.

[amandabeech]

121. Would a Buick be a land yacht instead of a barge?

It was upscale, being ahead of Chevy, Pontiac and Olds and just behind Cadillac.

Would a barge really have that much chrome?

[csziggy]

123. Yeah, maybe land yacht would have fit that behemoth better

It was a 1958 Buick Special, four door, emerald green with white roof, big fins, LOTS of chrome.

We started calling our original Suburban a land barge ages ago and have used that for oversized vehicles ever since. But for big fancy cars, land yacht fits better. Thanks!

[amandabeech]

126. FINS!!!!!!!!!

I love fins!!!!

I grew up in Michigan, and love classic cars.

Fins are my absolute favorite and emerald green is one of my favorite colors.

You should feel honored to have ridden in such a prestigious vehicle.

I bow down to you and your family!

[csziggy]

130. We had lots of cars with fins - loved those big GM sedans

The '58 Buick was a particular favorite since it was in the family for years. Grandmother bought it new. When she got the replacement, and unforgettable '64 Buick, she sold the '58 to Dad. My oldest sister got to drive it for a few years then it was passed down to me when I turned 16. I drove it until I went off to college in 1970 and Dad sold it to a local mechanic. Since the body and interior were in great shape, he cleaned it up and drove it around as a family car for a while, then sold it to a collector.

Here is a 1958 Buick Special, though not the emerald green we had:


Meanwhile, Mom got a '61 Caddy. While it didn't have the spectacular fins of the older GMs it had cool pointy fins:

That wasn't ours, but the same model. Mom's was black - had previously belonged to a funeral home. She got grandmother's 64 Buick after grandmother passed away, then got her 77 Caddy that she still has.

[amandabeech]

142. That Buick has intense amounts of Chrome.

Those horizontal pointy fins on the Caddy make a really nice line.

Cars these days all look alike because they're aerodynamically designed for good gas mileage. It's nice to see some of the older ones with real personality.

Thanks for sharing!

[csziggy]

144. Even the paint jobs on cars today are boring

If I keep my Suburban much longer (and I plan to keep it until it dies - or I do) I'll either have to get it painted or get a car wrap for it.

If I paint it, it will shade from royal blue on the bottom to light blue on top in metal flake. If I don't do that I think it would be cool to put some neat piece of art on a car wrap over the whole truck.

Something like Walter Crane's Neptune's Horses:


Flip it so both sides show the horses moving forward and it would be great!

[SheilaT]

112. Yesterday I got gas for $1.57/gallon. Wow!

Change back from a twenty dollar bill!

I had two episodes of extremely cheap, as in under .20/gal. First was in northern NYS in 1961-62. The second was in Tucson, AZ in about 1966-67. Both times I was paying decidedly less than twenty cents a gallon.

In fact, checking an inflation calculator tells me that what I paid yesterday is very, very close to the real cost fifty or so years ago.

[Shrike47]

113. Well, of course. And my after school job paid $1.34 an hour so I was making bank!

[another_liberal]

122. I did some field work one Summer vacation for a dollar an hour . . .

But we all got a lukewarm beer at the end of the day, no matter what age we were.

[Contrary1]

114. Cheapest I ever paid was 16.9 during a "gas war" in 1970...

and it was premium.

[PCIntern]

115. 28.9 cents in PA in the early -mid 60's nt

[muntrv]

117. In 1999, it was under 90 cents/gallon.

[krispos42]

124. Once...about 20 years ago

I think it was in Pennsylvania on my way to Illinois.

[easychoice]

127. 23 cents

I had a 1954 Volkswagon that took $2.00 dollars worth.It lasted me a week and a half.LOL

[Skittles]

129. 45 cents

WOOT!

[Raine1967]

132. I do. In the 90's when Clinton was President.

It was actually a year before that effin' damn election.

97-96 cents a gallon. Hudson valley NY. It wasn't really that long ago.

[immoderate]

133. I paid .17 a gallon when I started driving, early 60s.

When this song came out in '70 it jokes at gas for .40 a gallon. This later version has .95 as the "joke."

--imm

[lapfog_1]

134. in the late sixties

i had a 1959 VW bug with a 34 hp air cooled motor and I could put .50 in the tank and drive for about a week between school and home...

and I had one of these



and I could undo 4 bolts and pick the engine up (with my hands) and carry it into the basement to work on it in the winter time.

it got around 50mpg

[rufus dog]

135. as a kid in the 70's I remember have to give my sister 50 cents to take me places.

She was in college with no cash so the 50 cents covered my drop off plus her trip back across town to college.

Had a 78 Datsun PU when I was a Sr in HS. We would all chip in 50 cents for gas and another buck or two for beer and that would cover the expenses for the night. A fill up would be 7 to 8 dollars. I think my job paid $2.75 or $3.25 per hour.

[Cleita]

137. I remember getting gas for 35 cents q gallon back sometime

in the fifties. I used to fill my first car a Renault for $2. The gas station guys used to tease me about not being able to make money off of me. Gas must have been even cheaper then although the tank only held 10 gallons I believe. I also used to get 24 miles to the gallon so I didn't have to fill it up that often. Oh well the car was mostly a motor scooter with a shell and four wheels.

[Jim Beard]

140. When you mentioned the car was a shell on four wheels I remembered a car

that was originally seen on the highway in the 1960's It was a small shell on 3 WHEELS. @ in the front and one in the back. My father called it a "Turd on wheels" and my brother never quit laughing.

[Cleita]

143. This was mine.

I was wrong (senior memory). It got up to 40 mpg. It was fun to drive up until the day it fell apart almost all at once, which gave it the reputation of the worst car of all times.

Aw. The good old days.

[Lugnut]

141. I remember 5 gallons for a buck.

That was in 1961 when I got my driver's license.

[Blue_In_AK]

150. When I was first learning to drive, it was 25 cents,

sometimes as low as 19 cents if a gas war was going on. If you were riding around with your friends, you could put a fair amount of gas in the car with the spare change everyone had. There were guys working at the gas stations who checked your oil and cleaned your windshield, too, even if you were only paying a dollar for your gas.

Back in my day...

[Lebam in LA]

151. Got my DL in 1966 and gas was $0.24/gal

[Drale]

154. The Cheapest I remember is 1.25

I'm sure it was less in my life time but my earliest memory of gas prices is 1.25

[BigDemVoter]

155. I do. . .

The cheapest I can even hazily recall was around 35 cents/gallon. I can CLEARLY recall it hitting 55 cents & people having conniptions about it.

[Xithras]

157. Last time I saw that was 1992.

I remember because the gas station I used to fill at didn't have a spot for a third digit on their big sign by the street. They duct taped a big piece of cardboard in front of the numbers to add the dollar. Some of the kids from the local high school would rip the cardboard off the sign and walk in asking about the "one penny gasoline". The poor guy probably had to replace the cardboard "1." at least fifty times in the few weeks it took them to update the signage.

[gollygee]

159. I think it was around 25 cents when I was a kid and around 75 cents when I started driving

If my memory is working today.

[bikebloke]

162. I didn't start driving until 1972.

I'm only reminded of gas prices then when watching Starky & Hutch on DVD (it's been a while and I don't recall). Usually, they roar past some gas station with the price posted.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

165. When I started driving my own car in high school in about 1967, it was about a quarter for a gallon

[Recursion]

169. The Roanoke, VA WalMart in 1999, IIRC: $0.89

Shot up pretty quickly, though, once they had killed off the local gas stations.

[ladyVet]

172. I do.

When I started driving in 1974, it was still under .30 a gallon, if you went to one of those new-fangled places that made you pump it yourself. Before that, it was the odd/even day thing, which drove my father crazy from worrying he would run out before he could get more.

It upset Daddy to no end that milk and bread cost more than gas. He used to say he could walk to work, but he couldn't stop feeding his kids.

I remember getting things at the gas station, glasses, toys, maps, all sorts of things. One place had Christmas ornaments during the season. We could get Daddy to go to one station or another based on what they were giving out. I remember Esso stations, with their tiger.

At Christmas, stores had big displays of the Coca Cola Santa for that year. Of course, we mostly bought other brands of soft drinks, because they were cheaper. The same with candy. An RC Cola or Cheerwine (which Daddy calls Cherry Wine to this day) and a Moon Pie was a lot cheaper than a Coke or Pepsi and most chocolate bars. My brother and I could get a big bag of candy for recess for under five cents (two for a penny, three for a penny, five for a penny).

My mother would buy one brand of detergent or another depending on what we needed in the house at the time (dishtowels, dishes, kitchen tools, etc.) We always got toys in our cereal -- and Cracker Jacks had some good stuff, too.

We saved Green Stamps or Gold Bond stamps. I spent a lot of time licking stamps and putting them in books! When I got out of the USAF in 1981, I had to buy a refrigerator, as the house we rented didn't come with one. The local hardware store gave us a huge stack of Green Stamps, and the grocery story we shopped at gave double stamps on Tuesdays. By Christmas, I had enough books filled to get all the presents I needed. I learned to cut up a sponge and wet it, then use it to moisten the stamps so I could fill a book really fast.

Some grocery stores would have dishes you could get with a minimum purchase, and I remember this happening even into the 90s. In 1976 I bought a set of pots and pans from a salesman right before joining the USAF. I paid for them monthly, and I still have them (except for a couple of things that were stolen). Wonderful quality.