The title says it all

Who would have thought $1.22 per gallon gasoline would sound good?
That's what the price was in Mountain Home 25 years ago in the midst of a gas war, according to an upcoming look at news of yesterday. Ah, the good old days.

That's when one fast-food place offered a burger, fries and a drink for $1.84.

You can't even get a gallon of gas for that now let alone a meal that could give you gas.

With the price of gas heading toward the stratosphere, it makes you long for the time when gas was cheap. I remember pumping gasoline for 29 cents a gallon when I worked part-time at Joe Minnick's service station in DeKalb, Texas.

And that was for premium.

For that 29 cents, along with gasoline you got your windshield washed, your oil checked and free air for your tires while you sat in the comfort of your vehicle.

Now, for the premium price of about $2.35 a gallon and more, you get out your car, pump your own gas, wash your own windshield, check your own oil and air your own tires.

What's wrong with this picture?

When I was in high school (and yes, we had cars then), my buddies and I could chip in a quarter to 50 cents each, fill up the tank on one of our cars Friday night and cruise around town all weekend and still have fuel left Monday morning. I paid more the other day to gas up my lawn mower than we paid to fill up a friend's 1957 Chevy (which hadn't reached the classic car stage then).

Now, if four or five friends pool a quarter each they might get a half-gallon of gas and they should be able to drive home, if it's not too far.
Those were the days when cars were cars and gas was cheap. Those were the days when cars were still made of steel, six- and eight-cylinder engines were the norm and aimlessly driving from one end of town to the other was a relatively cheap way to pass the time.

Now, cars are made of plastic, six-cylinders are considered high-energy engines and driving from the garage to the end of the driveway is a relatively expensive trip.

Other than to stop driving, I can't think of anything folks can do about the price of gas. OPEC has the United States over a barrel, and oil companies have the rest of us over a barrel. And the cost of the barrel keeps getting higher. Sure, there was a report the cost dropped a little, but you can bet it'll be back up there soon.

It has been suggested that everybody in America not drive for one day and not buy gasoline for one day. That would show the oil companies what for, costing a day's sales and cutting into their profits. While that sounds good on Internet chats and in e-mails, it would only put small stations out of business, hurt the little guy and disrupt everything in the country.

Besides, you can't get everybody in America to agree on whether Pepsi or Coke is better, so how are you going to get them to not drive or buy gas for a whole day?

There's always the possibility of converting diesel vehicles to run on vegetable oil. I was reading that the guy who developed diesel originally had a means of using vegetable oil as a fuel. That could be promising; just pour some Crisco in your tank, and you're ready to roll.

Willie Nelson is using vegetable oil to fuel his tour bus. Now when you get behind Willie's bus you still get the munchies, but have an overwhelming urge for fries.

We could go back to using horses and buggies, but then you've got that little environmental problem horses leave behind, and we already have politicians putting out more than enough of that stuff.

We could start using electric cars, but where could we find extension cords that long, and how could we keep drivers from getting them tangled?
We are going to have to do something because we can't just keep paying higher and higher gas prices, just as we can't keep driving bigger and bigger vehicles that use more gas. I saw an SUV the other day that could double as a school bus. I've seen SUVs that are bigger than some of the apartments I've had. I saw one at a station the other day getting gassed up, and for what it cost to fill its tank my high school friends and I could have cruised for three years.

I just hope that in another 25 years somebody doesn't look back and say, "Who would have thought $2.50 per gallon of gasoline would sound good?"