I started driving in 1971 at the age of nineteen. I didn’t get my license when I turned sixteen due to circumstances beyond my control. In other words, I flunked the road test even though I aced the written classroom test. The state supervisor didn’t, I guess, like the way I parked in the high school lot. Maybe it had to do with sideswiping his own parked car.
Anyway, the first time I was obligated to stop at a gas station, pull out the wallet and pay for the fuel the gas cost thirty-two cents a gallon. This was before the Great Oil Embargo in 1973. Even at this pre-inflationary time, people were complaining that it was a nerve of the oil companies to jump the price up four cents from twenty-eight cents a gallon. Back then, when you drove up to the gas pump, the car’s tires drove over a hose that caused a ding to go off and send a message to an attendant in the store to come running out and give assistance.
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