25% discount if you pump it yourself!

[R K T]

1948.....Gas was 19 cents a gallon....14 cents if you pump it yourself!

[DARISC]

Nice looking Lincoln Continental. "Each of the 847 1948 Continental coupes wore a hefty price tag of $4,662 from the factory."

What Things Cost in 1948:
Car: $1,550
Gasoline: 26 cents/gal
House: $13,500
Bread: 14 cents/loaf
Milk: 86 cents/gal
Postage Stamp: 3 cents
Stock Market: 177
Average Annual Salary: $3,600
Minimum Wage: 40 cents per hour

[R K T]

The statistics looks about right except for the gas price. I remember paying 28 cents a gallon in 1965. We would fill up the VW bug for less than 3 bucks!

Pic of my Dad in '47....with a magnifying glass looking at the original pic....16 cents/gallon.

[Joeaksa]

Cheapest I ever paid was 19.9c a gallon...

That was in 1969 or so and the gas went into a 1950 Merc...

[GH85Carrera]

My 1st car was a 1960 VW bug in 1972. I paid $600 for it and sold it for $700.

It had 36 HP and I got 36 MPG. I did not have the Delux version so no gas guage at all. Drive until ya ran out, and flip it to reserve. Just be DARN sure to take it off of reserve once it is full.

I could drive for a month on $2.50 for gas. I still remember the first time I had to pay 4 WHOLE dollars for a full tank of gas I was simply outraged. I did get some gas during the gas wars for 19.9 per gallon.

I can remember pulling in for a tank of gas at the Service Station and a guy came out, filled it up, washed the windshield, checked the oil & the tire pressure, asked about my parents and brother & I got a Coke and a full tank of gas for less than 3 bucks. Of course at the time that was more than I made in one hour of work.

[Joe Ricard]

I was thinking this was the sign above the door of the local whore house.

[Les Paul]

Summer of 1966 Lawrence Kansas intersection of Ousdale and 23rd. Buying gas for my mower business. Gas station on all 4 corners. As low as 17 that summer up to 21. Right down that street was Griffs Burgers. Hamburger coke and fries 39 cents. You could get a bag of 10 burgers for 2 bucks. Cigarettes 35 cents. My Schwinn Varsity was 69 bucks and weighed a metric ton, shifted like hell but was a tough haul ass bike for Lawrence. Tested ourselves on 13th or 14th. Without stopping. What a flashback.

[GH85Carrera]

I can remember pushing the lawn mower with a gallon gas can strapped to the handlebars. I could get a gallon of gas and a Coke at the base gas station at Hickam AFB for 25 cents in 1969.

The lawn mowing business was great there, no winter break. We lived close to the Full Bird Colonels and Generals that they did not want to mow their own yard.

[WolfeMacleod]

Man, I can still remember the days when you could buy gas for $4 a gallon. Those were the days. It only cost $40 to fill up my Saturn! Nobody came out and washed the windows, asked about our family, or checked the tire pressure. In fact, just to put air in the tires cost a buck.
Yep, those were the days.

[McLovin]

Originally Posted by R K T

The statistics looks about right except for the gas price. I remember paying 28 cents a gallon in 1965. We would fill up the VW bug for less than 3 bucks!

28 cents a gallon in '65.

But what's to me even more amazing was that 35 years later - in the very late 90s (1999 or so), gas was under $1/gallon.

[WolfeMacleod]

Originally Posted by McLovin

28 cents a gallon in '65.

But what's to me even more amazing was that 35 years later - in the very late 90s (1999 or so), gas was under $1/gallon.

1997 and 1998. I remember this because I was building guitars and driving a fair distance to get to work. I think the cheapest I saw it then was about 95 cents at an Arco station.

[on2wheels52]

But those two silver dimes that bought that gallon of gas are worth $3.60 today (18 x face).
Jim

[GH85Carrera]

Ok geezer voice:

True story. As a kid in San Marcos TX in the mid 60s we would walk or ride our bikes along the ditch next to the road. We would pick up pop bottles and get 2 cents each. A few hours of that and we walk to the corner store and cash them in. Go back out and do it again. In a day we had enough cash for the two of us to go to the movies, see an Elvis movie. Of course that had a cartoon, serial movie, a newsreel and then the movie. We had enough cash to each buy popcorn and candy. And we rode our bikes to downtown movie theaters, left our bikes unlocked on the side of the theater and they were still there for us to ride home.

I was a 9 or 10 and we did that many many times.

[Hugh R]

Rob, do you know where that photo was taken? It looks like the station that once was near the intersection of Fairfax and LaBrea in Los Angeles, If it is, I have a really interesting story about that gas station.

17.9 cents is the cheapest I ever paid for gas in 1970 when I got my DL.

From GH84: My 1st car was a 1960 VW bug in 1972. I paid $600 for it and sold it for $700.

I've got that beat, in 1970 I bought a 59 Chevy Bel Aire for $45 that ran (lots and lots of rust) and sold it two years later, with a road trip from Oak Ridge, TN to Los Angeles, CA and back, for $75.

[R K T]

Hugh.... that's the location!

[Hugh R]

I knew it!

Here is the story, about 20 years ago when I was an environmental, health and safety consultant, I did work for CBS Television City which is now to the right of that picture. We were down in the sub,sub basement, and I smelled gasoline. The Plant Engineer said it was from a Gilmore gasoline station that used to be next to where TV City was now located. He had been there for years and said in the 70's you could pull a water sample out of the sump and light it. But never gave it another thought.

It turned out that the Gilmore station had abandoned underground fuel tanks that had been abandoned in place in the 40's or 50'ss. They leaked and TV City was getting gasoline in their sump pumps, the depth to groundwater was something like 20 feet below ground. TV City had been sump pumping the ground water and gasoline into the storm water drains for years (decades actually). I convinced CBS that that had a major discharge problem to the Waters of the United States for decades and needed to do something about it. They were really, really skeptical since they had been discharging for decades. I got them to contact a well known environmental law firm in LA who came out and said OMFG, you need to stop this immediately. It turns out Mobil (IIRC) had acquired Gilmore decades ago. We called Mobil and they sent out some geologists and engineers who looked at it and went WTF? The land where the Gilmore station was located was a tiny postage stamp of a piece of property in Los Angeles COUNTY, but all surrounding land was LA CITY. Multi-agency involvement, they went back to the site which was now a parking lot and excavated and pulled a lot a rusted out underground fuel tanks, that had been leaking gasoline for decades. Mobil did a major groundwater treatment program that is still going on to this day.

Small World.

[R K T]

WOW!.....and that's putting it lightly. Scary thinking how much of that went on everywhere there was an old gas station.
We grew up in the San Pedro/Wilmington area which is surrounded by all of the refineries. You can imagine what they did (or didn't do) back in the 30s and 40s, even the 50s. No concept of environmental issues back then. There was a refinery literally across the street from my Jr High School that would belch out thick black smoke every morning right about the time that we were running laps in PE class!

[Joeaksa]

Small world on the Pelican site...

[ossiblue]

Originally Posted by R K T

WOW!.....and that's putting it lightly. Scary thinking how much of that went on everywhere there was an old gas station.
We grew up in the San Pedro/Wilmington area which is surrounded by all of the refineries. You can imagine what they did (or didn't do) back in the 30s and 40s, even the 50s. No concept of environmental issues back then. There was a refinery literally across the street from my Jr High School that would belch out thick black smoke every morning right about the time that we were running laps in PE class!

Did you go to Dodson Jr. High?

BTW: You guys remember when stations had "gas wars?" When I was going to college in the late 60's there was a World Gas station on Lincoln Blvd in Santa Monica. During one of those periodic "wars" I bought gas at 10.9 cents/gallon. Lowest I ever paid or have ever seen.

[R K T]

Originally Posted by ossiblue

Did you go to Dodson Jr. High?

BTW: You guys remember when stations had "gas wars?" When I was going to college in the late 60's there was a World Gas station on Lincoln Blvd in Santa Monica. During one of those periodic "wars" I bought gas at 10.9 cents/gallon. Lowest I ever paid or have ever seen.

No....my wife was from Pedro and went to Dodson in the early 70s. I grew up in the ghetto/Wilmington and went to Wilmington Jr High and Banning. Right across from Fletcher Oil....can't even remember how many times that place blew up and covered everyones cars with oil.

Are you a Pedro boy?

I remember the "gas wars". If one station lowered their price by a penny, the other stations would respond by lowering theirs by 2 cents. There was a local SoCal guy named Parks that had a chain of Texaco stations in the South Bay that always had the lowest prices...AND they gave out Green Stamps and had their own coupons, one coupon for every gallon bought. When you had a certain number of coupons, you got a free tank of gas!