When I think back over all the really dumb things I've done in recent years — and believe me, they make up quite a list — perhaps none matches up to the decision my wife and I made in the summer of 2003.
Gird yourselves.
We (gulp) bought an SUV.
At the time, with our first child on the way, it seemed like the thing to do.
Five-star crash ratings, gas at only $1.49 and all that.
In hindsight?
Bad move.
Bad, bad move.
Gas at $3.89 a gallon amid a looming energy crisis and all that.
How could I not see this coming?
Stupidity mixed with a heaping dash of ignorance. That's how.
Go ahead. Cast your stones now.
I won't duck.
I'm not angry or frustrated or ready to cast blame on oil companies. I'm not bitter that the price of a gallon jumps a dime, inexplicably, overnight. I don't believe (yet) in some vast conspiracy to fleece drivers. I don't blame Detroit for not making more energy-efficient cars.
I don't blame anybody but myself for the fix my family's in. At the risk of getting too preachy here, I understand — albeit a couple years too late — that I and the 80 million other people who own SUVs are part of the problem, that it's irresponsible to drive a 2!-W-ton tank built to withstand mortar shelling down to the Quickie Mart for a bag of ice.
To tell you the truth, I'm a little ashamed to get behind the wheel of our SUV anymore. We have been relegated — and rightly so, I'd argue — to the ranks of cigarette smokers and other social outcasts.
And it's downright uncomfortable.
So I now drive my wife's car, a small Volkswagen whose tank needs refilling about once a month. I'm considering riding my bike the 2½ miles to work, or maybe even walking one day a week. The SUV sits in front of the house much of the time, and my wife and I are in the earliest stages of discussing what to do with it.
I'm trying to sell her on something more efficient, more responsible.
She is leaning toward keeping it.
And I see some of her points.
It's a difficult decision because it is a safe vehicle, it is very reliable — having driven cars that have stalled out at 65 mph on a four-lane highway, I can't say enough about this — and the folks at the dealership, in service and sales, have treated us like royalty. I'll go back there every time.
Most importantly, though, the SUV is paid off.
We owe nothing. Nada.
And the key consideration now is, do we want another monthly car payment?
No, we don't.
Staring us in the face, though, is that symbolic threshold: $4 a gallon.
The current cost of gas is hitting us in ways that $3 a gallon did not. And at some point, probably right about now, it becomes cheaper to shell out for a car payment than it does to fill up the SUV.
We're at a turning point, in other words.
Gas isn't going to get cheaper.
Some argue it probably shouldn't.
If $4 a gallon is going to make folks such as myself make smarter choices, they believe, maybe it's time for a government-imposed "price floor." I don't think cheap gasoline is any more the answer to our energy problems than discount cigarettes are to the pubic-health issues caused by smoking.
But a mandated minimum?
As New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently pointed out, Americans quickly forgot about the oil shock of 1973 as soon as gas prices fell. We got addicted to gas-guzzlers all over again.
Will we make that kind of dumb mistake again?
I hope not.
Staff writer Tom Murse can be reached at tmurse@LNPnews.com or 481-6021. The Voices column appears Mondays.
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