The World According to Wayno

Four dollars a gallon? Are you kidding me? Not really, and I’m surprised it’s taken this long here, since it was that much when I lived in Europe in the Sixties. But we’ve been spoiled for sure, and that’s why Detroit (and Japan) continued to produce the big SUV and luxury cars without any real worry about gassing them up - there was plenty of gas and it was cheap.

Now you know why the European cars were always small and “cute” because they had to be. It didn’t make any sense to use a gallon of gas to push 5,000 pounds of iron 10 miles down the autobahn when a smaller version would go just as fast (almost) and use less gas. But we insisted - we wanted to “feel safe” in our big get-out-of-my-way road hogs, and sneered as we past the little VW Bugs and Honda Civics, but now we are going to have to pay the piper. We had a gas crisis back in the early 70’s - Nixon changed the mandatory speed limit to 55 MPH and we started looking at diesel engines and smaller cars. It worked for a couple of years, and then we just slid back into our comfort level, raising the speed limit back to where it was, and making those big old trucks called SUV’s and started back doing the things we used to do. And now when we say “fill ‘er up” we do so with a cringe and a credit card, because unless you’re a bookie you normally don’t carry that kind of cash around with you. The only humor I get out of this is thinking about a guy I used to work with, just around the previously mentioned 1974 gas shortage.

He went out and bought a Honda because they advertised about 45 MPG and every day he would come into the office and brag about how great the mileage was. “Unbelievable! I’m getting 40 MPG and I love it!”

Well, after a while it started to wear on us, so we decided to have a little fun with him. Each day one of us would sneak out and add a little gas to his Honda, and each day he would announce his incredible mileage. “Can you believe it? I’m up to sixty-five MPG now? This is fantastic!” he’d yell to anyone within ear shot.

So anyway after we got him up to about 75 MPG we started taking the gas out each day. He would come in with this glum look on his face, and the announcements weren’t as loud - in fact, we had to ask him how his mileage was coming along. “I just don’t get it,” he would moan. “I’m down to 15 MPG and I called Honda and they don’t know why,” We finally let him in on our joke, but he wasn’t too happy although he did laugh about it.

So the bottom line is, get your bike out of the shed, think about if you need your next run to the store, and start looking for a car that you can use for the month on one tank. Happy motoring, keep smiling, and I hope you have a lot of Exxon stock.