Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Gas Lines


No look at gas stations would be complete without briefly considering that National Disaster known as the Jimmy Carter administration. I realize I might offend some visitors with that statement, as perhaps there might be 2 or 3 people in the world who look back fondly on the Carter years in Washington. The main thing I remember was the lines at the gas stations. During the Carter years, issues arose with both the Availability and Affordability of gasoline. In some cases you could not afford to drive because of high gas prices, and then sometimes gas was not available at any price. I can remember people would wait in long lines for gas, only to find the station ran out of gas as they got to the pump.

I can remember that the gas pumps had only two digits for price per gallon, $.XX per gallon. In designing the gas pumps, they had never dreamed that gas could actually reach $1 per gallon. When the prices shot up, gas stations scrambled to try and figure out how to deal with the fact that the pumps could not properly price the gasoline.