jttheclockman
Member
Well Smitty not many of you 80 and older members here so we will have to take your word for it. 
Gas Price Memory
- Thread starter Smitty37
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I'm not 80 and older....I am only 78Well Smitty not many of you 80 and older members here so we will have to take your word for it.
jttheclockman
Member
I'm not 80 and older....I am only 78Well Smitty not many of you 80 and older members here so we will have to take your word for it.
Stand corrected.:biggrin:
lwalper
Member
At the u-pump-it -- 19<sup>9</sup> in central FL in 1968-69. Typically about 23<sup>9</sup> at most stations. American "white gas" a little higher. We used that in the camp stoves and lanterns so you didn't get the lead deposits on the burner jets.
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magier412
Member
Funny thing is that as much as we all might think that the "good old days" of sub-$0.50/gallon gas would be great - that also came with sub-$1000/month paychecks.
I think that Skip is right, we are probably paying a bit less proportionally than back then - however, we are still WAY behind in terms of spending power now vs. then.
These days, only 5% of the population make more than $85K per year or more...and, depending on which major metropolitan area you live in, even that isn't enough to support a family anymore.
What happened to the time when a one-income family to afford to live comfortably in the US? The middle class is an endangered species I'm afraid...the standard of living has not kept up with inflation...
And now, I'm going to go think of something less depressing...sigh.
Edit: Found this: Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Prices
Interesting reading, but for those that just want the down and dirty, I attached a pdf of the nominal prices adjusted for inflation.
I think that Skip is right, we are probably paying a bit less proportionally than back then - however, we are still WAY behind in terms of spending power now vs. then.
These days, only 5% of the population make more than $85K per year or more...and, depending on which major metropolitan area you live in, even that isn't enough to support a family anymore.
What happened to the time when a one-income family to afford to live comfortably in the US? The middle class is an endangered species I'm afraid...the standard of living has not kept up with inflation...
And now, I'm going to go think of something less depressing...sigh.
Edit: Found this: Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Prices
Interesting reading, but for those that just want the down and dirty, I attached a pdf of the nominal prices adjusted for inflation.
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oneleggimp
Member
And one of those costs was an automobile. BIG BIG Difference now. In 1966 I bought a Brand New Ford Fairlane 500 with V-8, Automatic Transmission, Power Steering and Brakes, White Side Wall Tires - $2,000.00 out the door - including license, tax and title. That was a full-size car.
You caught a real bargain -- in '67 I priced the same car at over $2800 ended up with a Chevy at $2900...no trade and all cash, no financing.
Talking about cars - I paid cash with no trade and no financing for the first used ('57 Chevy Bel Aire 2-door Hard Top) and the first 3 new vehicles '62 Chevy Impala 2 door hard top, '67 Chevy Impala 2 door hard top and '69 Chevy C10 half ton pick-up) I bought. All of those vehicles got about 17/18 mpg highway and about 15 mpg local driving.
Didn't finance until I bought a BIG 10 passenger Ford Country Squire w/429 cid V-8 etc. Got about 14 mpg highway down hill with a tail wind and 11 in town but for a big car it could get out of its own way.
Didn't finance until I bought a BIG 10 passenger Ford Country Squire w/429 cid V-8 etc. Got about 14 mpg highway down hill with a tail wind and 11 in town but for a big car it could get out of its own way.
TellicoTurning
Member
You can laugh but I can remember when the only tractor in town was a Famall A (came out in 1939) and everybody plowed their gardens with a horse. My dad was an expert behind a horse or team of horses both in the garden and in the lumber woods. So I do know about 'oaters'. I also raised and bred standardbred horses for a few years until I got so many kids I couldn't afford it anymore.
Smitty,
I'm only a few years younger than you, but I remember my dad working the farm with a team of mules... we were sharecroppers most of my early years and didn't even own our own mules... Dad would take a team of young raw unbroke mules from a neighbor and break them to the plow...
I was a teenager when we got our first tractor - an old Farmall that Dad bought... he spent almost as much time keeping it running as he did working it.... shortly after that he and Mom separated and we left the farm for good.... good thing too, farmers work too d**n hard for my way of thinking.... when cotton came in, the whole fam damily put on cotton sacks and pulled cotton until the crop was in... Dad drug an 18 yard sack(18 yards of canvas and 4 or 5 feet wide, doubled and sewn along the sides... made about a 9 yard long sack that he drug, working mostly on his knees because cotton wasn't that tall and he was-- out in west Texas the rows could be almost a mile long), Mom's was about a 12 yarder and I think mine was somewhat smaller, maybe a 5 or 6 yard.... My older sister got out of the job 'cause she was babysitting my brother and my younger sister made an attempt, but more play than actual work. She was burned as a toddler and we kind of protected her from too much outside work because of the scars on her legs.
TellicoTurning
Member
Loved the '57 Chevies.... My first car was a '59 Impala 2 door coupe with an Okie rake on it... (the rear was dropped 2 inches)...and a Herscht conversion kit that took the automatic off the column and set 3 on the floor... I could just barely reach 2nd gear when shifting....
I got off the bus in Chandler, AZ when I was in the navy and headed back to San Francisco. My mom was there with her husband working at the local airforce base... I think I paid about $800 for it. It had a 348 Cu.in engine and once rolling(it was very slow off the line) ran pretty good, until about 85 or so... then the rear end started to lift from the tail fin wings... Driving around in San Francisco on those hills, I bet I rolled back into more cars than I care to count trying to get it up the hills.
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I remember .199 per gallon during a gas war, but by the time I worked in a Sinclair Station it was .299 and up. I washed cars and pumped gas for $5 a day for a 10 hour Saturday, $4.71 after deducting .29 for social security.
A miserable old miser came in and told me to put in 5. I put in $5 and he told the owner he wanted 5 gallons,not $5, he refused to pay for $5 worth of gas. The owner deducted $3.20 out of my pay that day because I put in more gas that he asked for.
A miserable old miser came in and told me to put in 5. I put in $5 and he told the owner he wanted 5 gallons,not $5, he refused to pay for $5 worth of gas. The owner deducted $3.20 out of my pay that day because I put in more gas that he asked for.
I never drove a 348 myself but a friend of mine had a 1958 Chevy Impala (first year for both the model and the engine) with 3 duces and it darn sure wasn't slow off the line. The hotest '59 Chevy I remember was the El Camino pickup truck. I almost bought a '59 while in the Navy, but couldn't figure out how to get it home (I didn't have a drivers license and had to pick it up in NYC) and nobody in my family at the time could have handled the city driving.
Where I grew up and wherever I bought gas myself it was always stated how much to pump in $$. If someone wanted gallons they said it very clearly when they ordered. I knew 1 older guy who always bought 10 gallons. He bought gas once a week and didn't use quite 10 gallons so every 6 weeks or so he'd skip a week and go out and drink on the gas money. I suppose 10 gallons cost him about $2.00 to $2.50 and that would buy a lot of 5 cent beers.
We had three gas pumps right in town and 2 of them were single pumps outside stores and the owners pumped the gas themselves. The only real service station was owned by a family friend but his brother is three months older than I am so he had the job of helping around the station - he didn't particularly want it but his dad had died and he didn't have much choice. So I never did have a job pumping gas.
oneleggimp
Member
Forgot that it also had AM/FM radio with built-in 8-track player. Yes Smitty, I did get a good deal. Bought it at an employee car sale. (I worked for Ford but wasn't high enough to have the "A" plan. - Had to make the best deal I could with the dealer.). Was under pressure to buy it. I started at Ford out of college and had a Dodge Lancer. I was on Salary and was told that I couldn't drive a "Foreign Car" (i.e. a non-Ford product) to work after my 90 day probationary period was up -which is was.
jttheclockman
Member
Someone say gas wars. I remember both gas wars. One good and one no so good.
TellicoTurning
Member
I had plenty of power once rolling, but I think they didn't change out the rear end when they did the Herscht conversion... or maybe I just didn't know how to drive it... I'd only been driving about a year when I got it... I didn't get my driver's license until after my 18th birthday...
I did drive for my boss the summer before I went in the navy... he owned a small chain of movie houses and I drove him to and from Dallas to pick up films, candies and such... he was legally blind and couldn't drive. Sometimes we drove in is wife's car, a '56 Chevy Bellair with factory air... he kept it so cold that I froze half the time... rest of the time I drove the company truck, a '56 Chevy panel wagon.. a station wagon without windows on the sides.. we ran 850 x 15 tires on the rear end with overload springs... the butt end sat about 6 inches up in the air... most of that summer my cruising speed with him was about 95... riding in the passenger seat was dead time for him and he was constantly telling me to get on down the road.
I wound up laying that vehicle on it's side and sliding it down the road a ways... There was a flat dog leg curve on the road between Buffalo and Donie, Texas and as I was coming into the curve early one morning (at about 90 or so) I just touched the brakes to slow for the curve, fish tailed and slapped a culvert post out of the ground, laid it over on the passenger side and slid for a ways.... luckily the back end was empty, if I'd had film cans back there they can weight from 30 to 60 lbs each, depending on how many reels in them, might have gotten clobbered in the back of the head.
TellicoTurning
Member
My first wife worked for Chrysler Credit when we first married... she always got flack for not driving a Chrysler product... I drove a Corvette when we first met and married, he first husband left her with a Ford Cortina. I didn't like Chrysler products and wasn't about to buy one at that time. In 7 years of marriage, we changed cars about 7 times and none of them were Chrysler products. :biggrin:
cwolfs69
Member
i remember in the 60's i could never get more than $5 in my 57 chev. i worked at an Esso station and a Norwalk station while in high school. They were all Full Service, no such thing as self serve. When they would have a "gas war" the prices would go as low as $0.15/gal at times. When it did start coming in you got $0.02 off for serving yourself.
They were pretty popular for a time when Richard Petty was putting manners on everyone at NASCAR with them.
oneleggimp
Member
Gas Prices
This is priceless!
All these examples do NOT imply that gasoline is cheap; it just illustrates how outrageous some prices are.
You might be really shocked by the last one (at least, I was)!!!
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things into perspective.
Diet Snapple, 16 oz , $1.29... $10.32 per gallon!
Starbuck's Reg. Coffee 16 oz, $2.10... $16.80 per gallon!
Lipton Ice Tea, 16 oz , $1.19... $9.52 per gallon!
Gatorade, 20 oz , $1.59... $10.17 per gallon!
Ocean Spray, 16 oz , $1.25... $10.00 per gallon!
Brake Fluid, 12 oz , $3.15... $33.60 per gallon!
Vick's Nyquil, 6 oz , $8.35... $178.13 per gallon!
Pepto Bismol, 4 oz, $3.85... $123.20 per gallon!
Whiteout, 7 oz , $1.39... $25.42 per gallon!
Scope, 1.5 oz , $0.99... $84.48 per gallon!
And this is the REAL KICKER.
Evian water, 9 oz , $1.49... $21.19 per gallon!
$21.19 for a gallon of WATER!!
and the buyers don't even know the source!!
(Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
Ever wonder why computer printers are so cheap? So they can hook you for the ink. Someone calculated the cost of the ink at (you won't believe it but it's true): $5,200 a gallon.
$5200 A GALLON!!!
So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on water, Scope, Whiteout, Pepto Bismol, Nyquil, or, God forbid, printer ink!!!!!
This is priceless!
All these examples do NOT imply that gasoline is cheap; it just illustrates how outrageous some prices are.
You might be really shocked by the last one (at least, I was)!!!
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things into perspective.
Diet Snapple, 16 oz , $1.29... $10.32 per gallon!
Starbuck's Reg. Coffee 16 oz, $2.10... $16.80 per gallon!
Lipton Ice Tea, 16 oz , $1.19... $9.52 per gallon!
Gatorade, 20 oz , $1.59... $10.17 per gallon!
Ocean Spray, 16 oz , $1.25... $10.00 per gallon!
Brake Fluid, 12 oz , $3.15... $33.60 per gallon!
Vick's Nyquil, 6 oz , $8.35... $178.13 per gallon!
Pepto Bismol, 4 oz, $3.85... $123.20 per gallon!
Whiteout, 7 oz , $1.39... $25.42 per gallon!
Scope, 1.5 oz , $0.99... $84.48 per gallon!
And this is the REAL KICKER.
Evian water, 9 oz , $1.49... $21.19 per gallon!
$21.19 for a gallon of WATER!!
and the buyers don't even know the source!!
(Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
Ever wonder why computer printers are so cheap? So they can hook you for the ink. Someone calculated the cost of the ink at (you won't believe it but it's true): $5,200 a gallon.
$5200 A GALLON!!!
So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on water, Scope, Whiteout, Pepto Bismol, Nyquil, or, God forbid, printer ink!!!!!
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Water is the one that gets me --- they can get that out of the tap at home for less then a penny a gallon. They can even put a filter on the spigot and still get it almost free. Yet bottles of water jump off the shelves and at least two of my kids have water coolers in their houses, even though they have filters for the ice makers and cold water supply in their refrigerator.
sbwertz
Member
Green Stamps! You won't believe how much trouble a couple of us got into one halloween for moving the "We give S&H Green Stamps" sign from in front of the gas station to in front of the local funeral home!
Kinda makes me think of the time at Great Lakes Naval Training Center that a bunch of us stole a sign that was and arrow with COMMISSIONED OFFICERS MESS printed on it and stuck it on the wall in our barracks pointing at the door to the head. A Marine Warrant Officer came in the barracks one night (because we had placed a FOR SALE sign if front of the barracks). and upon seeing that sign one could say he was not amused.
kenlicciardello
Member
I remember as a kid in the mid 60's going to get gas with my Dad in San Diego. He got really upset when the close gas station was 21.9 per gallon. HIGHWAY ROBBERY he called it. Drove another 2 miles to Fed Mart and it was 19.9 and all was well with the world again.