Well I borrowed my friend Danny (building super)’s car the other day and when I went to the Citgo to put $5 of gas in the tank I almost ripped my own eyeballs out when I saw the price per gallon.

I remember in high school the place where I got gas ("Happy Stores") was selling at 50 cents/gallon.  However, whenever I do have this thought, I almost immediately move to thoughts about the grocery store across the street from the gas station, which was a 24-hour grocery store, and it’s where, one night, Jay Tobler, Bob Nastanovich, and I went to buy link sausages for breakfast after we’d stayed up all night doing I can’t remember what.  We got a little stupid in the store and got thrown out for throwing cheeses at each other.  The cheeses were shaped like farm animals.  Which we though meant they were toys.  Remembering this, of course, puts me in mind of, later that same summer, how many other nights just me and Jay stayed up, smoking Marlboro Menthol (??) and Sobranie coloreds.  I had white Chuck Taylors on which I had beaded a design of a martini.  With olive.

Instead of talking about gas prices, the reporters should, instead, ask people to remember what they were doing at the time when, in their memories, gas prices were the sweetest ever.