You couldn’t take a big truck or SUV near a car dealer as a trade-in unless you wanted them to laugh right in front of you.

Years ago America went through the same thing. I am old enough to remember you could only get gas on days the last digit of your plate was correct (odd and even days). Even with the division you still had long lines, as we were short on what we thought was (then) expensive fuel. It prompted talks of cars with better mileage and alternative energy. The nation was fired up for change and self-sufficiency…until the prices came back down and short-term memory kicked in.

At the time OPEC saw we were not using enough as the prices increased and the certainly didn’t want us to focus on finding alternative (to oil) fuels. Well, here we are again. A record drop has short-term memory America back buying trucks and SUV’s.

Included in the top ten sellers for October was the Ford F-Series leading the way with 43,324 sold. Chevy Silverado was in the number two spot with 31,689 sold. Hummers which have been flooding the car lots have started rolling back into the streets.

How long does it take for Americans to forget? Somewhere between 43 seconds and I-don’t-have-a-clue.

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Unless you are, say, a family with oil ties to Saudi Arabia, the headline probably scared you. 

I will go on record by saying that although I am not happy with the oil prices going up, it may indeed be the best thing for America in the long term. 

No, not for any environmental save-the-platypus reasons — just old-fashion we-need-to-be-self-sufficient reasons. 

• We burn 25 percent of the world’s oil but only have 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves — see a problem yet? 

• We cannot continue to rely on other countries for our energy (or food or supplies or insert just about anything here). 

• China and India’s energy demands are expected to double by 2030 (they would then import more oil than the U.S. and Japan combined).

Yeah, who cares…that is 20 years from now. Well, I don’t think oil is trending down, so just imagine it takes the next 20 years to get to $46.23 per gallon. My guess is you will be sacrificing a few more things than a weekly outing to the movies (tickets will be $21.00 each by then). 

Please don’t send me an e-mail about Ethanol being the answer. It takes approximately 123 gallons of gas to get 100 gallons of Ethanol — how did you think they harvested and transported the corn anyway? 

Wake up! We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. Let’s get going and finding efficient ways to refine it, up the mileage on our cars, and be self-sufficient. 

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