A Gas Story

My local Shell station (see photo) has hiked the price for regular gas by 9 cents a gallon in the last two days. This latest round of price increases reminds me of a long-ago trip when I experienced a severe case of “pump shock.” The story goes back to the 1970’s, a decade of oil embargoes, gas rationing, and steadily increasing fuel prices. The media summed things up then by coining the term “gas crisis.”

It was June 1979. My friend Ray and I had been living in western Washington for several years, but neither of us had seen much of the eastern part of the state. So we decided to take a camping and sightseeing trip in the Cascade Mountains. Although Ray’s Audi would have been a better choice of vehicles, we drove my old Chevrolet instead. Before leaving Bremerton I filled the gas tank. The price was 84.9 cents per gallon. We agreed to split expenses during the trip.

On the second day we coasted into Winthrop, a small town on the North Cascades Highway with a western motif. Given their town’s remoteness and long experience operating as a tourist trap, local merchants had big ideas when it came to setting gas prices. Being thrifty, we checked every station in town, but the lowest price we could find was 94.9 cents for regular, take it or leave it. This was outrageous—10 cents a gallon more than the day before in Bremerton. With the Chevy’s gas gage on E, there was no way to avoid the shakedown.

I was driving so Ray filled the tank. It was his turn so he also paid for the gas while I was in the station’s convenience store shopping for drinks and junk food. As we headed east out of Winthrop, I grumbled about how this was the first time I had ever paid 95 cents for a gallon of gas. Ray looked right at me, waited a beat, and then said, “You didn’t pay 95 cents a gallon for gas. I did.”

By the end of the year, gas had topped that price just about everywhere in the state.