REMEMBERING THE '73-'74 & '79 GASLINES

Gasoline is now $4 for 'Regular' in many places. I paid $3.92 for it the other night at a SUNOCO New Rochelle gas station, bypassing my usual AMOCO, since their 'REGULAR' pumps were momentarily closed (to adjust the price again?) - 'High Octane' only. I had noticed $1.7 blank, meaning the change was in progress - probably was $1.75 or so a gallon.

There is no doubt we're struggling with the highest gasoline prices ever, but we're still paying less than half what most of the rest of the world is paying, and we are among the world's richest countries. For decades, we'd run away with paying practically nothing, fueling our gas guzzling 'monsters'. We took it for granted. That's now going to change.

There are gasoline supplies - no real shortage. I can remember a time when there was - 1973-'74, 1979; and during World War II, my being five years old in 1945. People in our neighborhood car-pooled - '39 Buick coupe, '40 Plymouth convertible, '41 Plymouth 2-door sedan, '34 Buick 4-door sedan. We had a '37 Chrysler 'Royal' 4-door sedan - great car! We saved our 'A' coupons for a long trip we took to Maryland at summer's end in 1945 - to pick up my older foster brothers. That was a day's trip, our even staying over night with friends in Philadelphia. There was no Jersey Turnpike then, just good old U.S. One! I do remember that.

It's hard to believe it's been 29-35 years since our last oil crisis - the Arab Oil Embargo. The median age of Americans is around that, so that happened before half of us was even born! If you're younger than 52, you were too young to drive - maybe some of you remembering what was going on as children - being in the family car. By '79, a few more of you were driving, more of you remembering that. I was in my 30s, nearly 40 by '79.

When the oil was cut off, it was a very scary prospect, but there was no sudden impact since we had reserves. But it wasn't too long before we at least saw a small rise in gasoline prices, when they had been less than 30 cents a gallon - for decades. I remember it had been as low as 16 cents a gallon at a NJ Route 17 Merit station.

The gas crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for me! A year and a half before - April 1972 - several jobs from the Mt. Vernon Pepsi-Cola Bottling plant where I worked were consolidated with their corresponding ones of three other New York/New Jersey Metropolitan area plants - to Lyndhurst, New Jersey. It meant that I had to commute

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