Don't forget that when you factored in what salaries were then, you still couldn't afford to go on a vacation anywhere. I remember that period of time, as financially my worst time ever. That was just before or at the start of the Gas Crisis. Previous to that it was 29.9 for regular gas. They even had price wars back then and if your competition went down a penny, so did you. Now it just works in reverse. No one ever goes down in price, in a competitive way, but, magically they all go up at the same time.
When I was in college I worked in a gas station pumping gas and doing minor repairs. We had three gas categories, Regular, Supreme and something called "Plaid". The later was the "cheap gas" (2 to 5 cents per gal. cheaper). What people didn't know was even though there were three types we only had two tanks in the ground. Plaid was pumped directly from the Regular tank. I can't begin to tell you how many times I silently listened to people tell me that their car ran awful with Plaid, and it wasn't worth the savings. Fill it with regular please! OK, gotcha!
I just don't miss it. 
