Anyone have a good and interesting story about a personal experience during either the Arab oil embargo in 1973 or the Energy Crisis in the late '70s?
Being born in that era was quite an interesting personal experience for me.
matt had skin problems for years due to the scarcity of baby oil. Only interesting thing for me was that I built a few solar air heaters. designed a collector grid, got a real genuine design patent on it and and as soon as I did it was “who cares”.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
I waited in line a lonnnnng time to get gas that was real expensive in California. But I think your date is off a bit, more like 1977…?
During the '73 embargo I waited my turn in a gas line and finally got to the pump. While the tank was filling, I checked the oil. The radiator cap blew off and I was covered with scalding hot water. I fell to the ground twitching. Horns started honking immediately and the attendant ran out nudged me with his foot and told me I must move the car. There was one particular cheerleader who stuck in my mind - his contribution was, “Move it, asshole!”
I managed to get the radiator cap on (abandoned the dipstick) and drove a little scarily home (2 blocks). I dived into the bathtub and filled it with cold water. My roommate got home a few minutes later and took me to the ER. I healed up well, it was only 1st degree burns, but it was ~40% of my body surface - that’s a lot of ouch.
I later decided to get into the oil business.
Only the Irish could come up with this soultion to the oil shortage:
Cars were only allowed to put gas in the tank if they filled with MORE than five gallons (five gallons is quite a lot for a European car). This meant that no-one drove around for hours to get a gallon or two. And it worked, people just drove their cars a bit less.
I once lost my corkscrew and had to live on food and water for several days
(W.C. Fields)
In my hometown, we had the odd/even solution: you could only get gas on odd-numbered days if your licence plate number was odd; the same with even days. (They only had the AA-#### plates back then.)
The big scam around this: Before 1975, licence plates were reissued every year. And since people sent in all their cars’ registration applications together, if you had more than one car, you’d get plates in sequence. So if you really needed gas, you’d just swap plates.
It was also a pain to remember that the pumped price was only 1/2 the real price. Pumps could only have prices of 99.9 cents per gallon.
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
AWB:
I don’t get the pumped price / real price distinction. I’d have thought the price at the pump would be higher than the wholesale cost, but maybe that’s not what you’re getting at…
Woops. I read it again and I’ve finally figured it out. Price controls limited the stations to under a dollar a gallon. (I thought you wrote, “They could have had prices of $0.99 a gallon if they had wanted” or something like that.) Never mind.
Nope. That ain’t it. When the price of gas began to exceed $1.00/gal in the ’73 crisis, gas stations had a conundrum, because the pumps themselves couldn’t charge more than 99 9/10 cents per unit. Gas stations did one of two things. Those that were able simply reconfigured the pumps to charge 54 cents (or whatever) per half gallon. Others simply set the pump price at 54 cents and said, “Whatever the pump says the total is, you owe double.”
By the time later crises came, almost all gas pumps had been upgraded/changed to handle not only $1 gallons but also liters. (Stupid liters.)
Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine
The gas pump 99¢ and $9.99 limitation really takes me back. A high school buddy would regularly rip off a small country store by pumping just over $10 worth into his Rambler.
My biggest fear at the time was that there wouldn’t be any gas around when I was able to finally buy a cool car. Ironically I bought my first V8 vehicle last week.
It’s your fault that I have no one to blame but myself.