It was the summer of 1968.
Some may call it the best of times. Others may call it the worst of times. The war in Vietnam was raging on, as were protests across the land. NASA’s Apollo program had orbited the moon. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated within two months of each other. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law, and Richard Nixon was on his way to becoming our 37th president.
I, on the other hand, just got my first summer job that year to earn and save money for college. It was at R&R Super Service, a gasoline and service station. My hours: 6 to 6, six days a week, with Sundays off. My pay: $1 an hour.
So, what happened now to make me think of “the good old days”?
It’s the fact it now costs me over $100 to fill up my Ford and the last price per gallon I paid was $5.19. That number, 5-19, made me recall that first job.
It was a hot June day. The bell went ding, ding as another car drove across the small black “hose,” signaling they had just pulled up to the gas pump. I rushed out with a wet sponge and a chamois and asked the older gentleman getting out of his 1954 Chevy, “Can I help you?”
He simply held up his hand, showing me all five fingers, and then walked into the station to chat with Ken, the owner of the station. I started the pump, washed his windows, checked his oil, and went inside and told him it would be $5 for the gas, and his oil level was fine.
The customer was outraged! He shook his finger at me, saying he wanted five gallons, not $5. Gas was about 30 cents a gallon, so he expected to pay about a buck and a half!
I was speechless. The customer turned to Ken and complained. Ken told him to calm down and charged him $1.50. Lesson learned!
It was a tough start to my new and equally tough job. Sure, I pumped gas, but we did a lot of truck and tractor tire replacements, tune-ups, brake jobs, car washes, mufflers, and starters, and other minor repairs. My boss, Ken, worked my tail off and, in return, he gave me a couple afternoons off to accommodate my American Legion Summer Baseball schedule. For the out-of-town games, all the guys would carpool up and drive our own cars and then all meet at the ballfield.
I recall driving to McCook, Nebraska for a game and got my first glimpse of a local gas war. Remember those? Each gas station would try to be the lowest price in town and, on that particular day, gas was 19.9 cents per gallon! In that case, “the good old days” really were “the good old days”!
As I said, this week, I paid $5.19 per gallon.
Can you imagine that old fellow who held up five fingers expecting to pay $1.50 and how he would react if I told him those 18 gallons of gas I pumped for him would cost $93?!
I am sure not an oil expert, but, according to Forbes Magazine, we not only reached oil independence in 2020, but we were exporting oil to other countries. The Energy Information Administration, according to Forbes, from September through December 2021, just a few months ago, stated our “exports grew each month to push the final average for the year 2021 to a net export number of 162,000 barrels per day.”
The Energy Information Administration goes on to say the top five countries we export oil to are Mexico, Canada, India, China, and South Korea.
Oil production is down in the United States. Finger-pointing is not.
President Joe Biden has said he issued thousands of oil drilling permits and, while that is true, a permit does not translate into instant oil production. It is simply a permit to allow for exploration, and it can take years for a permit to turn into actual oil production. That, coupled with labor and equipment shortages, means we are pumping fewer barrels of oil each day.
Nobody could say we don’t have enough oil reserves in America to service our demand, because we have more than plenty.
So the question is where do we go from here?
In my feeble and aging mind, I think gas costing over $5 a gallon is an emergency. It is to me, anyway, so I wonder why President Biden’s administration doesn’t immediately call together the major oil companies and have some sort of discussion on how we can ramp up the oil-producing process to give everyday Americans some relief.
The old saying, “water and oil don’t mix,” may have to be changed in this day and age to “politics and oil don’t mix.”
In light of the lack of action from our elected officials’ reluctance to find a way to grease the wheels of this standoff, I say put politics aside and act — and act now.
How do you see it? Tell me at gregawtry@awtry.com.
Greg Awtry is the former publisher of the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald and Nebraska’s York News-Times. He is now retired and living in Hubbard Lake. Greg can be contacted at gregawtry@awtry.com.
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