BoomerZoo Almanac for October 14-20, 2007: Jumpin’ Jack Flash! We use gas, gas, gas
We used to throw our pennies, nickels and dimes into a small container in the car. When we’d saved up a buck, we could put three gallons of gas into the tank. That was in my early driving days, for sure! Then those danged OPEC Arabs refused to heed our demands that they give us all the oil we wanted—imagine that!—and prices soared. In today’s market, we’d be grateful if we only had to pay a dollar for a gallon of
gas, but keep in mind that the prices had actually gone up about 300% in about a year. If that happened between October 2006 and October 2007, we’d be paying a lot more than $3.25 a gallon!
The good part of OPEC’s oil embargo was that we began to learn to conserve, cars sizes started to decrease, mileage ratings improved.
Note that those things seemed to be put on the back burner in the first half decade of the 21st century, so maybe the $90 per barrel oil prices are just the nudge we need to put us back in the ecology driver’s seat.
