Pain at the Pump

We were excited about the trip west. It had been months since we'd been "home," and we were all ready to see our families, eat our moms' cooking, and just enjoy December in southern California. Finals were over... we were packed... so we loaded up the '69 Rambler American and hit the road... the Harding campus growing smaller in the rear view mirror.

The plan was to drive straight through to San Diego... about a 36 hour trip. We were young... the car was tuned up... gas was cheap... three of the four of us could drive. We were off. We rotated driving... shotgun kept the driver awake... the back seat was for sleeping. It was our car, so Karen and Leslie chipped in cash to pay for gas... we figured $50 bucks each would cover most of it.

Twenty-four or more hours later we pulled into a gas station in the desert for our next stretch and fill-up. It was then that I noticed the price of gas... it was outrageous... literally highway robbery... what were things coming to... gas in this desert wide place in the road in December 1971 was over 50 cents a gallon!! What were we to do? We had to pay it... we were hostages to local price gouging. Sooo... we dug down and ponied up the ALMOST $10 it took to fill up the tank. One thing for sure... we'd fill up BEFORE the desert on the way back in January!!!

As we pulled away from the station I was already making plans... if gas was going to get this high, I needed a car that got much better mileage than the 20 or so mpgs this Rambler got. Eighteen months later we traded 3-speed on the colimn in on a Toyota Corolla 1200 with 4 in the floor... now that was a car... only ours was midnight blue!