Unlike Gun Guru, who apparently was 10 years old at the end of the 1970's, I got my drivers license in October of 1970. My first car was a '57 Rambler V8...cost me $95, which I paid $25 down and $10 or $15 a week until it was paid for [and I never got possession of the car until it was paid in full]. Dad ran a garage, and we bought our oil for the shop thru the local jobber. But we bought our gas from one of the local stations, because we could pay the same thing at the station that the jobber charged us--32.9 cents a gallon.
When I wasn't working after school at the garage in 1970, I was mowing grass with Dad's Farmall Cub as contract labor. I got 23% of the gross, which meant that on an average $15 mowing job--which would take about an hour--I made $3.45. Not bad money, when minimum wage at the grocery store was $1.65 an hour. And the Cub would mow about an acre an hour, and use about a gallon of gas an hour. So Dad was out less than $4 for fuel and labor for that $15, but part of that $11 gross profit also went towards belts, oil and filter changes, and whatever other maintenance costs he incurred.
Gas stations were plentiful, but 24-hour pumps only existed at truck stops. Most stations closed at 6 pm, while a few of the larger and busier ones stayed open until 9 or 10. Of course, most businesses closed at 6 pm most weeknights--some were closed at noon on Wednesdays as well--while some managed to stay open until 9 on Friday or Saturday nights. Until the chains came along, even restaurants in town closed at 8 or 9 pm. Some managed to stay open on Friday nights to catch folks after the high school basketball games, but even those usually were closed by 11 pm. So it wasn't all that unusual to have to take a date home by 11pm, because back then there was nowhere to go that time of night anyway.
You had to register for the draft when you turned 18, and then you hoped they never called you up. You prayed to not receive that letter from the Selective Service that began with the word "Greetings..." because that meant you were gonna be on Uncle Sam's payroll pretty soon, and the odds were quite good that somebody was going to be shooting at you. Once they began the draft lottery, you just prayed that your birthday drew a high number [mine was 352]. Several guys I knew got low draft lottery numbers, so they faced the inevitable and enlisted, so they could choose their branch of service. Thankfully, the guys I knew who served all came home in one piece.
My first new car was a 1977 AMX, with V8, automatic and a/c. It stickered out at $5,844 and some change, almost two grand higer than a stripped base-model AMC Hornet, and about the same price as a comparably-equipped Mustang II with the Cobra package, a 302 V8 and a four-speed. For another $500-$800, I could've bought an LTD II or a fairly well-equipped F-150. I got $1,344 in trade for my '70 Javelin SST with the 360 V8, and the $4,500 difference cost me $125 a month for 4 years. By this time I was working at a radio station making the princely sum of $3.35 an hour, gas was around 65 cents a gallon, and I was splitting the rent on a $150-a-month apartment with two other guys. Marlboros had jumped from 35 cents to 45 cents a pack in the average cigarette machine, so I bought mine at the local grocery store for $3.35 a carton, up from the $2.95 a carton I used to pay. Later in '77 and '78 I worked at the local wholesale auto auction [2nd job, while still working in radio], and we saw brand new '78 Indy pace car Corvettes go through with $13,000 sticker prices and wondered how anyone could pay that kind of money for a car.
I was in college during the 2nd Nixon term/Ford presidency, so I wasn't as affected by gas shortages as I could've been. I just knew that when I came home for the weekend, I'd better buy my gas for the return trip on Saturday afternoon. But I had a friend whose dad owned a Standard Oil station, and he told me how, as a kid, he'd try to see if he could squeeze $10 worth of gas into the tank of a Cadillac...and how it was taking $10 to fill up the average 20-gallon tank then. Worse, he said, was the fact his dad wasn't making any more per gallon on the gas than he did when it was cheaper.
Long post, I know...and that's not even getting into the politics of the era.
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Today's Featured Article - Women and Tractors - More Views From the Farmer's Wife - by Teri Burkholder. The top ten reasons why the judges wouldn't let you participate in the stock antique tractor pull: Hey, this is stock! It came with that V8 in it! That "R" on my tires stands for "really old" not radial! Blue gas? We thought it was a pretty color! What wire hooked to my throttle?
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