Strange Side Effect of Low Gasoline Prices..

[Stuart G]

Illinois price about $2.03 and it varies...Here is why it is strange...

In the 60s I remember paying 35 cents a gallon. It depended on where and when..(yes I am that old, are you?)

My first car I bought in 71 was a stick shift. Dodge Dart...$2000....That same car would cost 20,000 today, if it were available, (it isn't) ....divide 2.03 by 6....that comes out to 33 cents. So inflation is about 6 - 7 times the price of everything...?? (It depends on how you calculate it)...A house might cost $30,000 and today same house is 200 to 220,000

Why?.. Here is the point... .In Kentucky..gas is $1.75 is that correct?


So, given inflation and our current oversupply .....that $2.00 a gallon in Illinois
.............................................................and ..$1.75 in Kentucky..........(given inflation)...6 times

Here is my point:......................

...Gas is the same as the price of gas was in the late 60s.....

No, I don't know for sure...feels very cheap...(but it didn't feel cheap back in the 60s)...I remember driving through Kentucky in the early 70s...and seeing gas for 30 cents a gallon and saying to myself, "Boy, that is cheap..."
Oh well.... This really doesn't mean very much...(and I could be all wrong) ...But, it shows I have a whole lot of extra time to think about strange things

[gopiscrap]

1. lowest I ever got gas was for 49.9 cents a gallon

I had a big old beast that got about 15 miles to the gallon on the highway and about ten in the city I was young and dumb enough I would make a 16 mile round trip to fill up at that gas station specially because this car actually burned more oil than gas

[Stuart G]

2. I am older than you..When driving with the family to Florida in the 50s..I recall 25 cents a gallon

and less in some places..Strange I cannot remember yesterday, but I can recall the 50s price of gas.

[CurtEastPoint]

3. Will be 70 soon (I hope!) and remember well gas at 25, 26, 29.9 in NC. Where cigs were 25c also!

[Stuart G]

4. I recall my mom smoked in the 50s & early 60s..a carton of 10 packs of cigs, $2.00

About inflation and what it means long ago.....................................

In the movie...It's a Wonderful Life..with Jimmy Stewart.& others, a pile of money, $8,000 is stolen towards the end...Movie made in theaters April 46..Now what was that $8,000 worth in 45 when the movie was made?

Guess what? ...About .... $100,000 in today's money...

People watching that today haven't got a clue as to the meaning of that $8,000. Yes, it sure was a lot of money in 1945..(I think somewhere in that movie it talks about $5,000 houses..but I am not sure)

[WheelWalker]

7. June, 1967, I filled my 1960 Ford Galaxy 500 at 17.9 a gallon

to start my trip to Walla Walla to work in the pea harvest as a combine operator. If I recall correctly, regular was 13.9

[Stuart G]

12. Thank You for posting that. Great Memory..

[gopiscrap]

5. yes you are about 10 years older than I am

plus I didn't come to the US til I was 14 average price when I first had a car was about 58 cents

[dweller]

6. i remember 19.9 cents a gal

my 1st car a 64 Corvair Monza 3 speed
whee !

wish i still had that car
✌🏼

[WheelWalker]

8. Yep. Clear memory of 13.9 / 17.9 (regular/ethyl).

I was 17 years old and fresh out of HS, in my first car... a 1960 Ford Galaxy 500 2 dr hardtop.

[Stuart G]

10. We sure go back a ways...Local movie theater..$0.25 cents for someone under 12. (in 50s)

[House of Roberts]

14. How about morning matinees in the summer, probably mid 1960s,

for six RC cola bottlecaps?

[3Hotdogs]

15. My first gas was .26 Movies: 1950's Saturday matinee.

The show started at 1 p.m.

It started with 10 cartoons.... twice a year, 20 cartoon special.

Newsreel with Ed Herlihe.

Then the serial-- Flash Gordon Tarzan Superman


Finally 2 YES TWO features. Maybe Roy or Tarzan


All this would be over around 5:30, time enough for the folks back home to have their own matinee.

[WheelWalker]

20. Hit the Saturday matinees every week if possible. The Rivoli showed

everything you remember, but often - yes - even a TRIPLE feature. The Rivoli in Toledo and its Saturday kid's matinee, is an icon in my mind.

[WheelWalker]

17. Here's the story from my youth I most often tell...

Think 1959. We lived in an apt. complex in the Larchmont Gardens area of Toldeo, just a few blocks from the new Miracle Mile Mall and the new McDonald's (first in Ohio). I was 10, my little brother was 8.5 y/o. Every week we each got an allowance of one dollar. On Saturday we would hop the bus for a trip downtown. Round trip, ten cents. We watched a triple feature matinee show, usually at the Rivoli or Paramount theaters. Twenty-five cents for the show. Another fifteen cents bought a popcorn and a couple of boxes of candy (jujubes, good 'n plenty, milk duds, boston baked beans, dots, red/black licorice, etc. After the shows and a bus ride back to Larchmont, we then walked to Miracle Mile Lanes where we each bought 3 lines of bowling for thirty-five cents and rented shoes for another 15 cents.

A dollar in a kid's hands in 1959 could buy a lot of weekend satisfaction.

[Stuart G]

18. Great Story!!!......Yes, a dollar could buy a lot then..Thank You for telling it.

[tblue37]

9. Um, I remember 19 cents a gallon! nt

[customerserviceguy]

11. I'm probably

as old as you are, I do remember 35 cents a gallon for gas. And when I was making two bucks and change per hour, that seemed like a lot of money.

Today, we filled up both cars at the same pump, our local supermarket sells gas, and gives you money off for purchases of eligible products. If they allowed such credits on beer, I might not have to pay for gas at all! In any case, from stocking up over the last month, we had fifty cents credit per gallon on up to 25 gallons of gas. And the price had gone down to $1.84.9 so that worked out to about a buck thirty-five per gallon of gas.

Yes, we blew the wad with today's purchase, but with not really driving anywhere, that gasoline should last us quite a long time. It is comforting to know that if the power goes out (human beings make the power plants run) and we get a series of hot humid nights, we can spend several hours in one or the other vehicles in the driveway with the motor running and the A/C on to get some sleep, then it will not cost an arm and a leg to fill the tank back up. Way cheaper than a motel room that happens to have power someplace.

[Stuart G]

13. In 1966 got a summer job..making mufflers..Midas Mufflers. in a Chicago factory..

I was paid 1.73 cents an hour for factory work. Minimum wage then was $1.25 cents an hour. I recall that for a lot of workers that was a full time job. (they got more but it was not a lot more)

[customerserviceguy]

19. We probably

lived near enough to each other, in 1966, I was a kid in Merrillville, Indiana. Every year, I begged my father to take us to Chicago, to the Museum of Science and Industry, a collection of buildings left over from the 1893 exposition.

[Stuart G]

21. ...Museum of Science and Industry...was/is a great museum....

..My favorite exhibit..a model railroad..I think 60 feet long, 50 feet wide..or larger. You got to see that one to believe it. I haven't been there in 9 years. Lots of interesting exhibits. New ones, old ones. strange ones and more.
..I remember they had some kind of incubator, and you could watch chicks hatching live. Lots of eggs, and you would stand there for 10 minutes, and one would hatch, and there would be a brand.. new chick.
...They also had a coal mine that you could take tours through, farm exhibits, communication exhibits, etc. I started going with my family in the very early 50s..It was about 15 minutes from where we lived. In my opinion it is one of the great museums in the entire world. And yes, I have been to New York City, London, Tokyo, LA and other places.
..The Museum of Science and Industry is really one of kind. The basement exhibits are very special, and they also have a tour through a German Submarine from WWII..U.505..I guess it is still there. Hit the link below for more info...go all the way down to a bottom section of the link ...hit . .what's here you will not believe it.
.......................It is at the very bottom of the web site..right below "explore" hit ...what's here..
......yes, take a look if you have never heard of this place..please take a look

https://www.msichicago.org/

[customerserviceguy]

24. I visited there

in 2014, all that stuff is still around. The German submarine is now housed in a building, the Chicago winters were taking their toll on it. Our tour guide in the coal mine was flabbergasted when I went up to him at the end of the tour, shook his hand and almost tearfully praised him for his encouragement of children to be fascinated with science, as I had been five decades earlier in that museum.

[rolypolychloe]

16. I remember that on cars of that time, you could actually see the gas gauge move as you drove.

Yeah, gas was cheap back then, but the cars were such gas guzzlers you could see the needle move when you drove.

[Bayard]

22. Gas at the little station down the road from us is at $1.39 gallon this week

In rural Kentucky. Astounding.

When I left Calif 5 years ago, gas was close to $5.00 gallon. Equally astounding.

Was it on Rachel tonight? Talking about how much our air quality is improving with all the cars off the road.

[eppur_se_muova]

23. Well, some gas stations are closing down. Passed two yesterday in a short trip for groceries. nt

[3catwoman3]

26. When I was a kid, I remember my dad pulling in...

...to filling stations and telling the attendant that he’d like “a dollar’s worth, please.”

[Captain Zero]

27. 3-4 buddies could cruise around for the evening, chip in a quarter each and...

replace all the gas used cruising so your dad never noticed. Unless of course he checked the odometer, which he did.

[S.E. TN Liberal]

28. 19.9 was available in Detroit around 1972-73