Shinn the Writer

Good Heavens, I Thought Things

Were Getting Better

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The first time I became aware of postage stamps, I was four or five and in the back seat of our car and had an envelope in my hands. I asked my mother about the funny piece of paper in the corner. I learned that it cost three cents to mail a letter. A couple of years later, August 1, 1958 (Wikipedia has all kinds of fun facts, which is why I support it) the rate went up to a horrifying four cents. OMG.

 

Of course, that was what we like to refer to as the good old days. I think we’re still in the 70s, but with the “Forever” stamps, I’m never sure. They’re just embedded in my grocery bill where the pain is mixed in with the pain of shrimp and frozen lunches. I like the idea of not having to buy enough one cent stamps to add to a newly out-of-date full value stamp to match the new current rate. Forevers are a hedge against inflation and mercifully shield us from knowing how much rates have increased. BTW, stamps have increased faster than the rate of inflation over the same period, which would peg it at ten-fold.

 

But stamps are a small expense for me. I pay most of my bills electronically, eliminating much of my need for stamps. Gasoline is another matter. I remember I was still in high school and gas was on the verge of hitting a dollar a gallon. Unthinkable! One day as my gas gauge hovered near “E”, the first station I found was over a dollar. I passed it by as a matter of principle. Or principal. To this day I’m not sure which. The next station was the same story, and I exhibited the same behavior. It was the fourth station that I finally gave in to the inevitable. I would never pay less than a dollar a gallon again.

 

Gas went the way of the postage stamp. Although it could go down as well as up and varied from station to station as well as state to state, the trend was a slow but steady rise in the price. Then came 2008. It’s easy to remember, because Obama was running against McCain for the presidency. The summer before the election, I took a major road trip, my so-called “Big Sky Tour” (see my travel section, my 50-State-Pledge) and covered Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota and Nebraska, as well as going through California and Nevada to get there and return. That’s lots of driving.

 

It was fairly early in the tour and I was around Yellowstone Park. The radio was full of stories about how the price of gas was spiking and how it was killing off McCain’s campaign. George W. was the current president, so Republicans were being blamed. I took it as a sign that I needed to change my driving habits and abandon my lead-foot ways. My mileage improved greatly, but I still found that I spent far more on gas than I had planned. Seeing it soar over four dollars was a shock, but seeing is stay there was worse.