What would Mary drive? Not a gas-guzzler
Nothing like gassing up here in New Jersey. The cost per gallon is much lower than in some other states, plus your hands never get dirty since you don’t have to pump the stuff yourself. Talk about a driver’s dream.
After a few unnerving months the price of gas seems to have stopped its relentless upward climb. Wholesale oil prices are reportedly settling down, or at least they’re not rising. The price for light sweet crude oil, the petroleum standard bearer, recently dropped to $92 for a barrel from a high of $147 this past July.
Hallelujah. Motorists can now take a breath. But maybe we’ve seen this road before. At least for those old enough to remember the singing group the Monkees, or any of their pop predecessors, this is a déjà vu experience.
I’d love to say that I was driven through the seventies while strapped in a car seat behind my mom but that just isn’t true. (For starters, who even heard of car seats back then?) Rather, I drove through at least a part of the decade and also idled my engine in some pretty long gas lines.
In response, consumers changed their behavior and began to snap up small-sized imports and auto makers introduced more small models. But judging from the size of the most popular cars from the last few years, it’s hard to believe that any of us lived through that gas crisis. Gas lines have become a faint memory and we’ve let vehicles bloat back up again as price and supply stabilized.
According to the car information experts at Edmunds, the best selling auto in America for 2005 was the Ford F series, a line of chunky trucks. Over 900,000 were sold. The number two spot belonged to another truck, a big Chevy named the Silverado. These two monsters held onto the top spots in 2006 and 2007, although the total number sold did decline as the economy softened.
Not many people other than ranchers, arborists or home remodelers truly require full-size pick up trucks or SUVs to get through the day. Few folks living outside a war zone need a Hummer. Choosing transportation responsibly is a question of stewardship.
As a teacher, I often hear from students who are reluctant to invest the time necessary to master difficult concepts and vocabulary. I tell them that there is no a quick way out. Repetition is the key to learning.
We’ve just been through a repeat performance, a second gas crisis. Perhaps we are still in the midst of it and this price drop is temporary.
We’ve seen a small bump up just recently that some analysts attribute to post-hurricane problems shuttering the processing plants that hug the Gulf coast.
No matter. This time let’s adjust our behavior permanently. No more gas guzzlers. No need for another lesson.
Small is beautiful. Small is what Mary would be scooting around in if she were driving today. Jesus and Joseph were professional carpenters. They might have needed that big old pickup truck.
