Do you remember when......

I don't generally spend much time lingering longingly over memories of the past but today I did have a flash back to a kinder, warmer time. As I stood outside my car in the biting wind trying to get a malfunctioning gas pump to accept my credit card and ultimately getting assistance from a young attendant (she couldn't make it work either), I found myself remembering a time when I could drive into a gas station, tell the attendant to "fill it with regular" and sit comfortably in my car while he did so and kept himself busy while the tank was filling by washing the windshield and checking the oil level and tire pressure. Now I admit I don't have too many memories like that. I think it was only a few years after I started to drive that people began to have the option of pumping their own gas which was a novelty at the time. I seem to recall that gas was cheaper when you pumped it yourself but that may be only wishful thinking. One summer before I was married, a girlfriend and I took a driving trip out west and I remember we were appalled that the price of gas near Yellowstone was 47 cents a gallon. Back home in Indiana at that time it was only 33 cents a gallon. Ah yes, those were the good old days.