How well do I remember the

gas lines and the rationing during the energy crisis of the '70s.

I was struggling financially

back then, supporting a family of four on a small town editor's salary.

When a fill-up went from $5 to $15, it hit me hard in the pocketbook.

My monthly gasoline bill was now taking about a fourth of my income.

But that was the tip of the

iceberg. Everybody that made anything or sold anything also had to buy

gasoline and other petroleum products.

Everything from a loaf of bread

to a bar of soap shot up in price, interest rates rocketed up to the low

20s, and suddenly I found myself, just like millions of others, no longer

struggling to stay afloat financially. The struggle was over, and I was

dead in the water.

We paid the mortgage and bought

food, period. At the grocery store, the only consideration was finding

the lowest price, and buying the cheapest kinds of food. Luckily, I like

rice.

We didn't drive to the other

side of town to see relatives. We certainly didn't eat out. We got rid

of the '71 Ford Maverick that was costing a whopping $79 a month and my

dad helped me rebuild the engine in a '65 Comet that he had given us some

time earlier.

My wife sat at home, all day,

every day, with nothing to do but look after the kids and wait for me

to come home, since she had no transportation and no way to pay for gas

anyway.

And somewhere in the genetic

and cultural soup that constitutes my personality, there was the irrational

idea that if I just worked hard enough and long enough, somehow I would

be rewarded. An 85-hour work week became standard.

I did get a $10 a week raise

a sacrifice for my employer, since the cost of ink and paper was shooting

up just like everything else but it put me into a higher tax bracket,

so my take home pay actually got smaller.

But I digress.

As president, Jimmy Carter

got the blame, rightly or wrongly, for the mess we were in. I'm not sure

there was much he could have done. I know he tried. A huge tax cut might

have helped, but he couldn't possibly get that through a Democrat-controlled

Congress.

Conservation efforts and renewed

exploitation of local sources of oil did help, though not fast enough

to save Carter from being a one-term president and becoming the best ex-president

we've ever had.

Now George W. Bush is facing

his own oil crisis. The same oil producers who caused all the trouble

then are at it again, holding back production and pushing up prices. We're

being warned that prices may double this summer.

In the interim, prices have

been held artificially low so that U.S. companies haven't been producing

much. It's too expensive to get it. They would lose money in many cases.

Energy needs have basically

not been addressed for more than a decade. Since OPEC increased production

and reduced prices in the '80s, we've just been living on the good graces

of the producer nations.

Bush is addressing those needs

in a comprehensive way for the first time in a long time. And though he

may be coming up with the right answers, whether he is coming up with

the answers that will get him reelected remains to be seen.

If we have anything remotely

like the economic crisis that hit us in the '70s, I'm guessing Bush will

get his own chance to wow us with his charitable activities as ex-president,

no matter if he should score perfect 10s in every other arena.

He is right to emphasize conservation,

and he is right to emphasize production. I don't care how many miles we

can squeeze out of a gallon of gas, as our population booms we will have

increasing demand. If supply doesn't increase along with demand, you know

what happens.

Prices are going to go up regardless.

The key is to allow them to rise roughly in tandem with the average rate

of inflation, rather than holding them down only to see them suddenly

shoot through the roof at the whim of OPEC.

We have more going for us now

than we did in the '70s.

For one thing, the federal

budget is balanced. There's a surplus and, if the now-Democrat-controlled

Senate doesn't derail it, we'll get a modest tax cut soon.

I'm hoping this price spike

will get U.S. companies back into the oil business to stay, and between

that and conservation, we'll have OPEC members begging us to buy some

more of their oil.

I really don't want to have

to go find my old WIN button.