{"id":51778,"date":"2022-05-30T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T00:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=51778"},"modified":"2022-05-30T00:01:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T00:01:54","slug":"that-was-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=51778","title":{"rendered":"That was then"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gas-prices.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-51779\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gas-prices-300x291.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"291\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gas-prices-300x291.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gas-prices-1024x994.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gas-prices-768x746.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gas-prices.jpg 1284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ahhh, yes. We remember those days, don&#8217;t we. They&#8217;re gone forever. As Don Henley once sang, <em>&#8220;Don&#8217;t look back; you can never look back.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But this picture does remind me of a more innocent time in the life of our great nation.<\/p>\n<p>I am 72 years of age, which makes me old enough to remember how simple life used to be for all Americans. I remember a time when gasoline sold actually for about half the price shown in the picture attached to this post.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up in Portland, Ore. Dad had this way of talking to gas station attendants &#8212; <em>yes, they&#8217;re still on the job in Oregon to this day.<\/em> We would ride in a car he was driving; he would pull up to the gas pump at the station.<\/p>\n<p>The attendant would approach the car and Dad would say, <em>&#8220;I&#8217;ll take a buck&#8217;s worth of regular.&#8221;<\/em> Yep. One dollar&#8217;s worth of gasoline in the car.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s do a bit of simple math. Gasoline sold for about 25 cents per gallon in those days. A &#8220;buck&#8217;s worth&#8221; bought Dad about four gallons of gas. If the vehicle he was driving was somewhat fuel-efficient &#8212; bear in mind that &#8220;fuel efficiency&#8221; was hardly on our minds in those days &#8212; he could drive, oh, about 60 to 75 miles on just those four gallons of gas.<\/p>\n<p>I am left to simply sigh wistfully.<\/p>\n<p>Those days won&#8217;t return. I find myself at this very moment wishing for &#8220;less expensive&#8221; motor fuel to drop to less than <em>$4 per gallon.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Today we are grumbling at everyone. The president needs to &#8220;do something&#8221; to stop the skyrocketing price of motor fuel. In truth, the president is virtually powerless to control these prices. We bitch at the oil companies for price gouging. I am inclined to join that crowd, but I certainly understand there is little we can do to fight against what we believe is occurring in oil-company board rooms.<\/p>\n<p>If they&#8217;re all doing it, how do we boycott the oil companies?<\/p>\n<p>We are left to wish for worldwide conditions to change and for the worldwide supply to make it a bit more economical just to pump fuel for our motor vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>If only we could turn back the clock.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"mailto:johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com\">&#8212; johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ahhh, yes. We remember those days, don&#8217;t we. They&#8217;re gone forever. As Don Henley once sang, &#8220;Don&#8217;t look back; you can never look back.&#8221; But this picture does remind me of a more innocent time in the life of our great nation. I am 72 years of age, which makes me old enough to remember &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=51778\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">That was then<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7910],"tags":[1591,1857],"class_list":["post-51778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-news","tag-energy-policy","tag-gas-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51781,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51778\/revisions\/51781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}