Opinion: Gas price solutions rest with experienced geezers

Recently, I returned to some area cafés at the time of day when geezers hold forth. Early as songbirds, gentle old men gather daily to dicker over news headlines and yesterday’s minutiae. Geezers like nothing better than to take on one another about such weighty subjects as the proper time to plant tomatoes or which school’s basketball coach most deserves firing.

My own dad, hale and hearty at 83, dodders down to the Depot, a landmark coffee spot in my Mississippi hometown where he and his friends trade insults, swap jokes, embellish legends and, generally, solve the unsolvable. This familiar scene repeats itself in tens of thousands of cafés and general stores every day. Geezer coffee klatches are as American as baseball and, I suspect, draw a larger daily crowd.

The fraternity of geezers is pretty easy to join. It requires no membership or dues and has few rules. Heck, you don’t even have to be old. I’ve met a few teenagers who qualify. Identifying a geezer is easy, too. While driving, they completely stop their vehicles in the middle of the road prior to making a turn. Aside from that, all that is required to be a geezer is for one to rise early and dress poorly.

Members of the opposite sex are permitted to attend geezer coffee klatches, but most know better, and besides, they’d never appear in public dressed like Clem Kadiddlehopper, comedian Red Skelton’s hobo character.

In search of material for an article, this columnist donned his best polyester leisure suit and set forth to visit a few pre-dawn coffee klatches.

It never takes long to figure out the geezers’ hottest topic of conversation. When it emerges, they all start talking simultaneously, sounding like a band of baboons when the lion comes around. This primal style of communication is a sure indication something’s wrong. Writing a wrong is a reporter’s favorite thing to do.

Based on my elaborate research, here’s what’s wrong in geezerdom today: GAS PRICES. Merely mentioning the price of gas causes bedlam akin to the sinking scene in “Titanic,” making mothers reach to cover the ears of their children.

It ain’t pretty, this gas situation. Like Jack’s beanstalk, it keeps going up and up with no end in sight.

People who run businesses are starting to sit up in the middle of the night wild-eyed, staring into the dark, wondering what they’ll do to stay afloat.

Geezers know a nightmare when they see one. Many of us actually lived through a similar time back in the 1970s when oil companies scored record profits under the idle eye of a Republican administration headed by a guy who claimed he wasn’t a crook. The era encompassed both The Energy Crisis AND disco music, which meant times were as tough as they could get. Note also, a lot of today’s geezers are old enough to have started driving when they could buy FIVE gallons of gas for, believe it or not, ONE DOLLAR. Regular gas sold for 19.9 cents a gallon in the late 1950s. A quarter-century later, in 1978, a gallon sold for 65 cents, a mere 12 percent increase when adjusted for inflation; but you had to wait in long lines to buy the stuff.

Geezers recall those days, particularly geezers who ran their own businesses, so I asked them what they did to get through it. Here’s what they told me.

They stopped driving gas-guzzlers, garaged their barge-sized cars, or leased or bought more efficient vehicles.

They set up sales and delivery routes that allowed serving customers or calling on prospects on specific days, thereby reducing mileage and saving on fuel costs.

They got better at working the phone, setting and confirming appointments before driving to see customers. Direct marketing, primarily by mail, saw a huge surge as clients sought ways to reach people without having to drive as much.

They car-pooled and helped employees find ways to share rides to work.

They rediscovered public transportation and promoted it to employees.

A few started doing something weird: They rode bicycles on city streets to get to work.

In a nutshell, they conserved. I could be wrong, but I don’t seem to see a lot of conserving going on these days. The Hummer, for example, is a dandy symbol of societal denial. One or more nearly run me over daily, mostly when I’m making a right turn.

Anyway, maybe the old geezers have the right idea. So before convenience stores deplete their supply of the plastic numbers they use to post gas prices (Rob Wilson at Rapid Robert’s tells me that they have fewer “3” placards than “1s” or “2s”), we should, at the least, start talking about conserving stuff.

One final note: Geezers in the 1970s raised hell with their legislators, insisting that cronyism with Big Oil would result in being voted out of office. They also lobbied, successfully, to increase the mileage deduction allowed by the Internal Revenue Service. That’s not a bad idea, either.

I have to stop now. I have to make another right turn.

Bob May is former managing partner of five local radio properties and is now engaged in the publishing of large-print phone directories in about 50 small towns in southwest Missouri.