Published: May 08, 2008 09:34 pm            

KEN HART: Price of gasoline making for tough times

“There once was a time when everything was cheap,

But now prices nearly puts a man to sleep.”

— Blind Alfred Reed



When I was a youngster, my family owned and operated a small country store on U.S. 60 in western Carter County, near the Rowan County line.

One of the products we sold there was gasoline. Those being the days of full service, one of my duties was to man the pumps when my parents were otherwise occupied.

I can’t recall precisely what our per-gallon price for gas was back then, but one thing I do remember is that my mom, my dad and I had this sort of informal contest among us, I guess you could call it, to see who could pump the largest quantity of fuel, dollar-wise, into a single vehicle.

Hey, it was rural Carter County in the early 1970s. We made our own fun.

I also remember that for a long period of time, I held the distinction of being the person at our store who’d dispensed the largest dollar amount of gas.

That amount? A little over $11 worth. The vehicle into which I pumped it? A school bus.

I’ve been thinking about those days a lot lately, as I’ve watched gas prices spiral inexorably toward $4 a gallon and beyond.

I’m not trying to come off here as some old fogey waxing sentimental over the days when candy bars were a nickel, bread was 10 cents a loaf and so forth and so on. The prices of virtually all consumer products go up over time. It’s called inflation. I get that.

But, I have never seen anything quite like the most recent run-up in gasoline — and diesel fuel — prices.

Quite frankly, I’m scared.

I don’t believe that we realized until recently the degree to which fuel prices underpin nearly every aspect of our lives.

It’s almost as if our entire economy was built on the notion that gas was always going to be cheap.

Now we’re finding out what happens when it isn’t.

Soaring food prices are one of the unfortunate side effects. It costs more to deliver products to your local grocery store, and those costs ultimately are passed along to us, the consumers.

And, I fear that four-dollar-a-gallon milk and three-dollar-a-loaf bread are only the beginning.

It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, friends.

The song I quoted at the beginning of this column was recorded in 1929 by bluesman Blind Alfred Reed. The title of it is “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?”

I think that’s a question that’s just as relevant today as it was in the year that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.

        

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