"$100 for Gas... Dear God, Help Me"

Back in December of 2002, I purchased a sweet new '03 Suburban Z1. Being a twenty-year Army guy, I of course got it with 4x4 and the "off road package." Leather interior and rear passenger DVD entertainment center, Bose sound system and 0% financing completed the deal. My reasoning for buying this behemoth? My high school son, I envisioned, would always be packing his compadres in there for trips to games and school outings. Dad would be at the wheel and deeply immersed in son's "high school experience." Dads don't always get it right, do we? Man, how naive could I have been? Same reasoning for buying the billiards table and the house with the pool and the dock and the little center console fishing boat. There I would be, so went the dream, cooking dogs & burgers for "the gang," as they laughed and swam, fished and water skied... all under my watchful eye. That's just how it unfolded for all of you... right?

Well, yesterday brought this parenting concept full-circle. My "low fuel light" went on and I pulled into the Kangaroo/Chevron station at I-95 and Rt. 100. The Beast has a 35 gal. tank and it drank 32.583 gallons @ $3.069 per gallon. Yes, indeed, the photo at the top is of my recent $100.00 tab. I knew this day was coming, yet it was still tough to accept. When I'm willing to share my age (61 yrs., 9 mos. & counting) I can tell stories of the "gas wars" when I was a kid: "Esso $0.19/gal"... "Sinclair $0.185/gal"... "Atlantic $0.17/gal." Yeah, yeah, I know, "People made a lot less money back in The Olden Days." But, believe me, gas was an infinitely smaller percentage of average income than it is today. And guess what? It's going higher... and I'm not liking it.

To tie this together, what happened was that my son got a job and his license and a jeep - every kid's dream. He and his pals did their best to overcome the old: "Man, Palm Coast is so boring" routine. They did it in Daytona and Orlando and St. Augustine and Jacksonville... but they did NOT do it in my Suburban or in my pool or in my boat (ok, a couple of times, but you could count them on one hand, over four years... and they didn't ask me to drive or cook).

So now he's gone - off to Tampa for school - and I've still got the Suburban. This baby gets 14.7 mpg (averaged by the on board computer). I've had it for 4.5 years and accumulated 98,000 miles of driving pleasure. Shocker?... At $3 bucks a pop, that's over $20,000 worth of gas... Dear God. Throw in routine maintenance, washes & wax (I'm in real estate and need it clean), parking and two sets of huge, expensive tires, etc... and you're pushing $30,000. It should take a full year's average "Florida salary" to operate a vehicle? Aaagghhhh.

The Democrats say it's Bush's fault. The Republicans say it's the long term effect of Clinton's policies. The Greenies say it's poor resource management. Some combination is more like it. Other than some moderate expansion of current US oil refineries, we haven't built a new one since the 1970's... Ouch. Remember when the US was at the top of the world steel market? Then we helped rebuild the industries in Europe and Japan after WWII with modern technology. Result? We died on the vine and are pretty much at the mercy of foreign steel vendors today. Do you smell gas?

Oh, well, it's time for me to change my mindset. Anyone want to buy a very well maintained Suburban? I'm thinkin' smaller these days. Is this the correct spelling of P-r-i-u-s?