When I was a high school student I pumped gasoline for my Aunt Kate and Uncle Charlie, who had a gas station/garage at Mausdale.
Gasoline was 22.9 cents per gallon, unless there was a price war going on, and you could get a quart of Pennzoil, Quaker State or other good quality motor oil for around 30 cents. Some gas stations bought oil in bulk and sold it for as low as 15 cents per quart. Their profit on a gallon of gasoline was about a nickel.
Even in my ‘41 Ford hot rod, with its radical camshaft, a pair of double throated carburetors, high compression heads and dual exhaust that got around 15 miles per gallon, I could go from Danville to Harrisburg and back for about $2.50. A friend who had a 1946 Plymouth could do it for a dollar less.
Today, in my Chevrolet Cobalt that averages between 25 and 26 miles per gallon overall and 32 on a trip, it costs more than $15 to make the round trip to Harrisburg, unless gasoline went up in price since yesterday, a distinct possibility.
Pretty soon, gas stations will have to hire full-time price-changers to keep up with the pace of the increases. I don’t know what gas stations are making on a gallon of gas these days, but I do know that the oil companies continue to make obscene profits. I also know that the federal government is subsidizing oil companies, despite their huge profits.
I can’t think of a single reason why the oil industry is subsidized by the federal government — well, at least I can’t think of a good reason.
But who cares if some working stiff has to get to the job? He or she will just have to pay the price for fuel to get there or be unemployed.
Recently, truckers drove through Washington, D.C., blowing their horns to protest the high cost of fuel for their rigs. I doubt that it did any good.
Truckers, like the rest of us, are being gouged by big oil, especially if they use diesel fuel at considerably more than $4 a gallon. Many, if not all of them, are passing on the spiraling costs in the form of surcharges. So are the airlines.
I also wonder why we continue to export petroleum from our Alaska oil fields while we continue to import it from the OPEC nations. We send it abroad and buy it from abroad. What’s wrong with this picture?
Increased use of hybrid vehicles would also help our energy situation. Driving more hybrids wouldn’t necessarily mean lower gasoline prices, but it would save money in the long run.
The U.S. Department of Energy has mapped out the cost difference between hybrids and other vehicles. Rather than list all of them, let’s compare a Toyota Prius with a sibling, the Toyota Camry, standard model.
The DOE used a purchase price of $22,057.82 for the Prius and $18,411 for the Camry. By the time the average owner would be looking toward getting another vehicle, the Prius would have a resale value of $8,532.73, while the Camry would be worth $4,861.74. The Prius is projected to have annual maintenance costs of $471.46 and the Camry $509.77.
The cumulative cost of owning the Camry would be $30,681.20, while the Prius, which has also saved 38,400 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, would cost $22,057.82, according to the DOE. The average annual cost of owning the Prius would be $1,231.91 less than the Camry over a seven-year period, according to the department’s figures. So, buying a Prius instead of a Camry would save you more than $8,000 over the seven-year period and still be worth nearly $4,000 more than its sibling, the Camry.
Better yet, if someone would come up with a viable fuel cell vehicle (there are some in use, but generally only businesses and governments are able to use them), we could run it on the most abundant substance on the planet — hydrogen — emit only water from the tailpipe and thumb our noses at OPEC.
So, how come we don’t have fuel cell-powered vehicles available for general use? Ask the auto makers in Detroit. How come we’re subsidizing the oil companies? Ask their buddy, George W. Bush.

HAROLD PRENTISS is retired as managing editor of the Standard Journal.