Byron Wardlaw and I were close chums in high school, Hart, to be specific, Forever Home to The Mighty Indians and not those nuevo bird flu hawks (lower case). Byron owned this hot rod black GTO. Stomping on the gas, his monster Pontiac would lay rubber, swerve hither and yon, then disappear as a smoking dot on the horizon. Our heads jerked back as we hauled asterisks in primitive young male arrested development glee.
Once Byron grinned and offered the preamble to all Bad Things when he said, “Watch — THIS!!!” The “THIS!!!” was the GTO’s gas gauge. Santa Clarita’s one traffic light turned green and Byron punched the accelerator all the way down to the front axle. My eyebrows skeet shot to the top of my skull. The muscle car’s gas gauge plummeted an entire quarter tank in seconds.
A 1967 GTO gas tank has a 21.5-gallon capacity. I remember thinking, “Wow. Byron just went through a buck-and-a-half worth of gasoline!”
Petrol back then? Gas was about 22 cents a gallon.
Almost 60 years later, I own a Prius. If I could somehow sneak it through time, I could fill up my Toyota hybrid for a penny or two under two bucks. In the Alternative Universe Department, if teenage 1967 Byron could vault forward to 2025, his GTO’s exhibition of speed would have cost my friend about $25. Twenty five bucks to go screaming a couple hundred yards. If he would have done it four times, which would have taken less than a minute, he’d be out of gas AND a C-note.
I shake my head in wonder. Today, my sensible little 48 mpg Prius will be stopped at a light. Four stories above and next lane over will be the Darth Vadarmobile, a black, jacked-up 4×4 with tires easily costing $500 each. Rock ‘n’ roll engine. Tuned exhaust. How much money does it cost for this noble tradesman or worthless son of a wealthy landowner pay to fill up his standard 31-gallon tank?
Today? A safe estimate for a gallon of regular dumbbell greenies California 87-octane runs you about $4.50. That works out to about $140 for a fill-up for a truck like that. They make 100-gallon aftermarket gas tanks. Simple math? Just $450 to fill up that puppy. Most drivers of these monster trucks are not handicapped 94-year-old widows. They’re guys. Manly men. They don’t use all that horsepower and ground clearance to drive to the Piggly Wiggly on Thursdays for the day-old bakery sale. They mud womp. They toss deer and Bigfoot carcasses in the bed. They pull stumps. They hit the freeway at 4 a.m. to get to a construction site in Orange County. Some are paying $600 easy to $1,000 a month-plus to buy gas. Truck payments? A new 3500 can run you $65,000 — and exceed $100,000. Payments are an easy $650. Insurance? Add another $300 for cheap-o, I Don’t Care If An Illegal Alien With No Proof Of Insurance T-Bones Me.
How? Do these guys? Do it?
My freshman year of college, my alleged best friend, Phil Lanier, waltzed into my bedroom one Saturday morn. With his patented and winning Bill Clinton snake oil salesman smile, he shared that he had “sorta” drained our mutual bank account. At the time, Lanier and I were co-editors of Amalgamated Buffalo Chips, our college satire magazine. Sitting on the edge of my bed, Phil explained how we had “sorta” gone into the used car business. Somehow, on a weekend before 10 a.m., Phil had bought a 1937 Chrysler panel truck for $35 that didn’t run. Well. Uphill. The other vehicle was a 1956 British racing green Mercury convertible with wire wheels and faux leopard skin interior for $125. Electric windows. Ran like a top. Loved it. Used it to sneak our dates in the Merc’s ballroom-sized trunk into the Mustang Drive-In on Soledad back in the days when people were more trusting and management at the entrance ticket booth didn’t search your trunk for blondes and redheads.
The panel truck ended up being temporarily being stored at a friend’s place with the stipulation from the friend’s dad that it had better be off the back-40 within a week. It wasn’t. The dad dragged it via tractor to shore up a flood control embankment. Haven’t thought of it in decades, but, I’m guessing it’s still there, the artificial and rusted Great Barrier Reef of what is still a backwater part of Santa Clarita.
I miss those halcyon days of inexpensive fuel, when cars didn’t all looked exactly like the same tennis shoe, when they were made of steel and chrome and had bottomless mirror finishes you’d wax and polish on early weekend mornings.
Today, we have more creature comforts. You can connect your smartphone to your car stereo and listen to hundreds of thousands of songs. Back then? We had AM radio and were at the mercy of a fast-talking disc jockey. When the Beach Boys came over the tinny speakers singing, “Good Vibrations,” alone or with friends, a huge smile would crease my face. I certainly was light years away from the beginning of our drug epidemic and worship of tuning out, but, I loved anything from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album.
Funny, the similarities. Even then, hitchhiking hippies would gladly accept a free ride in a gas-guzzling muscle car, followed by snide comments about supporting Big Oil or The Man. Today? The shaming hippies ARE The Man.
I hear that with California driving out oil refineries, gas might hit $8 to $10 a gallon soon. Even in my 48-miles-to-the-gallon Prius, I wonder.
Will I be able to drive all the way to the beach or just sit in the driveway, seat reclined, tank empty, listening to Oldies But Moldies on my iPhone.
With more than 100 writing awards, Santa Clarita’s John Boston is Earth’s most prolific humorist and satirist. Look for “Naked Came the Novelist” Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch, coming this fall.
