I’m pretty sure it was the spring of 1974, and I think it was a Sunday.
I had two tickets to see a concert at Capital Centre. It was John Denver, and it was a show both my girlfriend and I had been looking forward to. We saw a lot of good concerts that year — Bob Dylan and the Band, Loggins and Messina, Crosby Stills Nash and Young. We even saw Bette Midler in a different venue.
As it turned out, though, we weren’t going to see John Denver.
It was the height of the gas shortages. OPEC was embargoing us, and we were at the worst of the long lines, odd and even days and no gas at all on Sundays.
It always makes me feel old to think that until the first bumps in ’73 and ’74, we were only paying about 35 cents a gallon for gas. Even after the prices increases in the mid ’70s, I think we were still around a dollar a gallon. My second car — the first one I really loved — only got 10-11 miles a gallon in city driving and 14-15 in highway driving.
It had a V8 engine, 350 cubic inches and it would scoot.
It was a 1973 Camaro.
But the car I was driving on this concert Sunday wasn’t a Camaro. It was my first car, a 1972 Ford Pinto. Pretty close to the worst car I ever owned. It got OK mileage, but I had forgotten to get gas and was unable to find anywhere to fill up.
I never did see John Denver.
I thought about this the other day when I heard that the computer hacking of the Colonial Pipeline was causing gas shortages up and down the East Coast. All of a sudden, I noticed that the stations I usually visit were more crowded than normal. My tank was about two-thirds empty, so I filled the tank at $3.29 a gallon.
It’s funny. Paying 35 cents in the early ’70s strained my budget more than $3.29 does now.
We’re well enough off and drive little enough anymore that if we had to pay $10-12 a gallon now, we could do it. So more than anything else, it’s just a matter of being able to get it.
And remembering to plan ahead.
That may be the hard part.