Tue, May 13 2008
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Published April 30, 2008 06:51 pm - Robert Lebzelter column for May 4, 2008 Nobody wants to be inconvenienced today A ROBERT LEBZELTER column Star Beacon “Happy Days” was new on TV. Leisure suits were just coming into vogue. Disco was on its way. Welcome to 1974. Oh yeah, and gasoline prices were skyrocketing and there were fears we were running out of the stuff. Talk about high prices. Gasoline, which hovered around 20 to 30 cents per gallon since World War II, suddenly leaped to 55 cents per gallon. Can you imagine, $1 doesn’t even get you two gallons of gasoline? Service stations were left without gasoline, or you were forced to buy the higher premium stuff because that’s all that was left. President Richard “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon asked service stations to close on Sundays. That really didn’t save any money. There was just a run on gasoline come Monday. There were other impacts. Little subcompacts like the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto, which a year or two before went for $2,200 new (yes the comma is in the right place) now could be bought used for $2,200. That’s because they had good gasoline mileage. At 55 cents a gallon, you didn’t want to be stuck with a gas guzzler. The government cracked down on Detroit, ordering better fuel efficiency. The crackdown may not have been necessary though. Detroit got the message as people ignored American cars for foreign vehicles that got better mileage. We were told during the energy-rich 1960s that some day, all of that oil beneath the earth would be gone. Maybe not in my lifetime, may be not in yours, but sometime. And by the 1970s, with cars snaked around the block awaiting a turn at the pumps, that prediction was coming true. How could it get any worse? People were told to ride bicycles to work when possible, car pool, there was increased interest in mass transportation, be it buses or trains. 
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