Gas 39.9 cents/gal in 1972

For Blackfly Gazette August 8/18

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Ontario to Tilley for $1.50 (not counting beer)

                        by Robert LaFrance

            August already. I can’t believe it. There must be some mistake. Only last week I was looking out at my orchard and waiting for the snow to melt.

            Ah well, we must accept what we can’t change, and things are changing rapidly. For example, if you do text messaging you are aware that you no long have to use capital letters. Send a letter to Aunt Melanie over in Minto and you may tap out: “we plan to go to the lake this afternoon along with the putin family and some oligarchs from st petersburg. aunt melanie you would like vladimar and his pet mouse Donald j t.”

            Another thing that has changed greatly in the past decade or two is that most of us carry a water bottle around. Most of them are bought stores as if our tap water, though perfectly safe and healthy, is a combination of sulphuric acid and Strontium 90. This is an example of merchandising by some pretty brilliant folks. They have managed to persuade people that their ‘spring’ water is better than our well water that is clean and tasty and is even filtered by a $1100 UV device. Back in 1990 a water test revealed that there was “the potential of a trace” of fecal coliforms in it. That’s poop as we know.

            Then there is the booming pet food industry. Probably it was the bottled water sales people who first told the public that they mustn’t give table scraps to their dogs because scraps will give our canine friends Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or something worse – measles maybe? Also, dogs and cats should be kept inside or the world will end.

            Accordingly, because dogs and cats are now allowed to sleep on living room furniture, they tend to leave a certain aroma, but all is not lost. You just have to buy a can of Lysol and spray it everywhere to get rid of the pet smell. Nothing healthier than having every surface of one’s house covered in a chemical spray. Another commercial suggests that teenage boys may stink even worse than dogs and cats, so his room should also be soaked with Lysol to maintain that ‘fresh and clean smell’.

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            Indeed, most things have changed since I was a kid. If anyone had told me in 1961 that someday I would be able to carry my phone around in my pocket and even take photos with it I would have told them to lay off the Paarl brandy before lunch.

            My younger daughter recently moved back to Canada after almost two years in Asia, but while she was there I could take a photo with my mobile phone and send it to her mobile phone within a minute. Compare that to the mail delivery in the 1700s when my ancestors in what is now Quebec city, Province of Quebec, would send a letter back home to Paris, France, in the spring and if they got a reply at all it probably wouldn’t be until the fall. If Champlain had had email and could have received a warning that the English were coming in 1759, we would all be speaking French now. Oh, wait a minute, we are all speaking French aren’t we? Although my accent has been compared to aardvarks mating in a metal barrel.

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            The cost of gasoline today is horrendous, but we seem to be taking it in stride. Buying gas in spite of the high cost is similar to smokers’ continuing to buy tobacco products even though they are aware that smoking causes lung cancer and, as a double whammy, cigarettes cost a small (maybe not so small) fortune these days. When I quit smoking on February 10, 1973, I was paying about 60 cents for 25 cigarettes. Now that same number of smokes costs as much as $12 unless you come across a wrecked cigarette truck along Highway 105, just south of Riverbank, NB.

            Yesterday I gassed up our Corolla (I was aghast!) and had to mortgage our house just to half fill the tank. The gasoline cost $1.309 a litre. It doesn’t even help to change it to metric. If I had been buying by the gallon the price would have been four cents shy of $6.00 a gallon. Picture that.

            I lived in Ontario from 1967 to 1972 and in January of that year I sold my 1966 Falcon Futura sports (sporty?) car before I killed myself on the Queen E Highway between Burlington and Toronto. I remember the last time I filled that car with gas at a small gas station along Highway 20 near Stoney Creek, east of Hamilton. It cost 39.9 cents a gallon. Somebody has made a mighty profit since those heady days when one could drive from the Hamilton area to Tilley, NB, for a dollar and a half, not counting the beer one might buy on arrival in Tilley.
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