A stiff one
Here’s a joke for you: Four writers get into a van. They’re on the way to tour a Ford F-150 pickup assembly plant in Norfolk, Va. They haven’t met previously, so they break the ice by complaining about the price of gasoline.
“This is terrible!” the first writer says. “I can’t afford to drive anymore!”
“Tell me about it!” writer number two replies. “I have three kids I have to chauffeur around town to soccer games!”
“I wish I hadn’t bought that SUV now!” says the third.
After a brief pause, the fourth writer, from the Netherlands, says, softly, “You know … I’ve been paying $4 a gallon for years.”
“Yes, but this is America!” says writer number two.
Pretty funny, eh?
I was one of those writers. It was 1999, and the average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline in the U.S. had just reached $1.17.
That trip popped into my mind last week after I paid $4.15 per gallon for gas on my way home from a meeting. Typically, I had forgotten to buy gas before going. When I started for home, the red needle on my gas gauge was hovering just under “E.”
So I stopped at the first station I found. I don’t drive much, and the previous time I had purchased gas, I had paid $3.65 per gallon. I wasn’t happy. I can remember when gas cost 28 cents a gallon. I could fill my Volkswagen Beetle for less than $3 and drive all week. When gas shot up to the then-unthinkable price of 45 cents per gallon during the OPEC oil embargo in 1974, I waited in line on alternating days to buy however many gallons were allowed that day. A traveling musician at the time, I had no choice.
On the day I wrote this column, I paid $4.29 per gallon for gas. I still wasn’t happy, but when faced with adversity, I try to keep what the British call a “stiff upper lip.” The saying stems from the observation that when you are ready to cry, your upper lip quivers. “Stiff upper lip, old chap! Carry on!”
Stiff upper lips helped the Brits weather the German Blitz in World War II. Contemporary America, I judge, lacks a collective stiff upper lip.
Unable to deal with the prospect of Major League Baseball being canceled, or being asked to wear a face mask for a time, our upper lips quiver. Faced with gasoline prices that are high but still fall, on average, $3 per gallon below those in most “Western” countries, we cry, “But this is America!”
Contemporary Americans never would have made it through the almost six years of rationing of food, gasoline and other products that our forbearers endured during World War II.
Stiff upper lip, America! It might help us keep our mouths shut.