I saw something this past week that I never dreamed I would see again in this lifetime…a gas war!
For those of you young’uns in the bunch, these used to be quite common. Two gas stations, both on a busy intersection, or both sitting at the base of an interstate exit, for example, would each lower their per gallon gas price in hopes of undercutting and outselling the other guy. Then the competitor on the other corner would lower their price even more. Following that, the first station would retaliate with an every lower price. I can still remember one that got so low that you could get your gas at 35 cents a gallon. Of course that was in the early '70s before the '73 gas crisis and everything changed.
Anyone else out there seeing any of these rara aves in your area?
I dunno - I see this all the time - one station drops its prices, and the others follow, and maybe go a penny lower. Same deal - if one place has to go up a nickel, the other place will go up 4¢.
Speaking of the 70s, I remember '76-'77 when people were peeing themselves at the prospect of paying $1.00/gallon for gas!!! This chart, showing inflation-adjusted prices, is interesting…
I remember those days! I was about 16 years old and I was so afraid my parents wouldn’t let me get my driver’s license because gas was going over a $1.00 a gallon and would be way too expensive. Now, I’m getting excited because I’ve seen gas as low as $2.15 a gallon where I live.:rolleyes:
The inability for people to adjust for inflation drives me batty. Yeah, gas was under a buck a gallon, but what were you making (or what was the median wage/salary) back then?
We’re down to $1.89 last I looked. I’ve never paid much attention to gas prices*, I just pull into the station, fill up, pay whatever it is and leave. But tanking up for $22 instead of $50 is pretty noticeable.
*I always think it’s funny when people say 'I went to [place 3 miles away] because the gas was $2.75 instead of $2.81" and I’m thinking 'you drove 6 miles out of your way and probably spent an extra 10 or fifteen minutes to save, what, fifty cents?". On the one hand, I figure, even if you don’t about for the time, you spent the savings in the gas it took to drive out there. OTOH, I know that math doesn’t compute for some people, but I think for those people they think they’re saving like $5 or $10. They don’t realize that 5 cents per gallon times their 10 gallon tank just isn’t that much money.
