Now & Then: What’ll you give me for a tank of gas?

My favorite gas station is next door to my bank. Talk about fortuitous. Before I fill up my tank, I’m just steps away from taking out a loan.

I remember when buying gas was a lot simpler, not to mention less stressful. As a teenager, I worked as a curb hop (look it up if you’re less than 60) for 50 cents an hour plus tips. 

Back then I drove my family’s Opel that boasted a four-cylinder rubber band. I could put 50 cents worth of gas in the tank and cruise around town all night. 

Today, an hour’s pay will buy enough gas to get me home.

When I was driving that Opel, I often got gas from the late Paul Boone, who owned a service station on Highway 64 east of Asheboro, just across from S.T. Stevenson’s Texaco. He had a photo on the wall inside his office to remind him of an earlier gas war. The picture was of his sign advertising gas for 19.9 cents a gallon, sometime in the late ’50s or early ’60s.

My math tells me that 19.9 cents will get me one-twentieth of a gallon of today’s gas. Depending, of course, on the latest price of crude oil.

But don’t get the idea that I’m complaining. I’m just concerned about the less fortunate who may feel like higher gas prices are putting them in a straitjacket.

Speaking of gas prices, did you ever wonder why service station signs always add the .9 to the price? I can’t think of another consumer good that’s priced like that.

For instance, a gallon of milk may be $2.50, not $2.50.9, right? Same for soft drinks, vinegar, bleach, etc.

No other item I know of adds a fraction of a cent to the price. So why do gas stations add the .9?

Well, I’ve already done the heavy lifting so you can rest easy. Pricing of gasoline goes back to the turn of the 20th century, about the time Grandpa bought his first Model T.

According to my unimpeachable sources, back in the day, gas sold for just pennies a gallon when governments decided to impose a tax. Those taxes were just fractions of a cent and the gas stations would add just the fraction without rounding to the next cent, since that would have been a budget buster for many customers.

The federal Revenue Act of 1932 taxed gasoline and was supposed to expire in 1934. Instead, Congress extended and increased the federal gas tax as a means of funding roads and infrastructure during the Great Depression.

Since gas stations were pricing their product with the added fraction, consumers came to believe that was the added tax, even as the tax, both federal and state, was much more than .9 cent.

Meanwhile, consumers became accustomed to the .9 at the end of the advertised price. But they don’t usually round it up to the next number.

So, when you see $3.99.9, you tell your friends, “Joe’s Gas is $3.99,” when in actuality it should be rounded up to $4.00.

Retailers, of course, have for decades used this tactic to make their goods seem less costly. A shirt that’s priced at $19.99 sounds cheaper than $20, right? 

But I learned from my father, who was a bookkeeper, to round up the price. When he saw an item in a store priced at $8.99, he would point at it and tell Mama, “You don’t want that. It’s $9.”

I’ve picked up that habit, especially when I add in taxes. If I see something priced at $99.99, I round it up and add taxes. “That’s gonna set us back about $107,” I’ll say. “That’s almost enough to fill up our gas tank.”

■ Larry Penkava is a writer for Randolph Hub. 

Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com.