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We called it “The Gas Wars.” As you can imagine, in a town small enough to count the number of existing gas stations on one hand and still have room left over to delicately grasp a chicken wing, the entry of a new regional convenience store chain, aggressively proximate to another similar establishment, was bound to generate some healthy competition.
Nationally, gasoline prices had already been quite low. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a gallon generally running you somewhere between a buck and a buck fifty.
In a rural community, though, with a shiny new franchise gas station set up a block away from what we supposed was its hated competitor — no internet forum available to facilitate collaborative speculation about such things at the time, although Michael’s Café would do in a pinch — there seemed no limit to how low gas prices could go.
A palpable sense of giddiness streaked through town when it got below a dollar. Old farmers’ eyes lit up. The price breached the 90-cent mark. Motorheads coated the pavement with rubber. Parents’ discarded Astro vans, filled with teenagers, flitted from town to town with reckless abandon, in search of nothing more pressing than a novel fast-food drive-thru.
The falling gas price eventually slowed. Now it was absolutely crawling downward, one cent at a time. The lowest I remember it getting was a paltry 87 cents per gallon.
Of course, 87 cents meant a little something different at that time than it does today. Right around then I’d acquired my first job paid by the hour, a dime above the minimum rate, at $5.25 (I had been a paperboy a long time prior to that, but that paid per newspaper bagged and chucked, with no regard whatsoever to the substantial time it took to flee from dogs, argue with disgruntled subscribers, etc.). Although the pay wasn’t particularly great, you could also pull up to a McDonald’s with a $10 bill, plus a little loose change to cover the tax, and pull away with 10 double cheeseburgers.
Setting aside the many nuances required to compare then to now in any meaningful way, I can assure you that even 20-some years ago, 87 cents for a gallon of gas was cheap.
And, you know, looking at rising gas prices today, with the average price soon likely to attain a new record at five dollars per gallon, I can’t help but think that super-cheap gas wasn’t really all that good for anything.
People felt that they could drive a lot more, sure. Many more of them than do today ended up dying on the highways for it. People who did not need a pickup truck or SUV snatched them up. Sure, those roadway monstrosities guzzled gas, were way overpriced compared to more sensible vehicles, and tended to roll over on curves. But who cared, with gas that cheap?!
Nobody gave a thought to another attempt at trying electric vehicles, with the inexpensive gas flowing. We spewed greenhouse gasses, most of us, then, uncaringly. Almost nobody actually socked away any of the money they were saving on gas; savings rates hovered near historic lows.
Low gas prices didn’t prevent 9/11, or the ensuing dual wars that followed (although oil dependency arguably had a big hand in precipitating our many conflicts that arose in the Middle East). Ditto for the housing crisis, the Great Recession, and all the other rollicking disasters that have plagued our country since the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In fact, looking back on 87 cent per gallon gas prices now, I think the best thing about them was the unfolding melodrama at a time when smartphones were still pretty much science fiction.
Nobody likes paying extra for anything. That’s all right — hey, this country was founded on not wanting to pay extra for stuff. But maybe when it comes to gas, at least, before literally burning it, people should have to stop and think for a second about whether it’s worth it.
High gas prices are an incentive to stop burning so much gas. Even at five dollars per gallon, that might not necessarily be such a bad thing.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
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