Having experienced a few "gas crises" over the years, I no longer devote much time or energy to worrying about skyrocketing prices at the pump. History endlessly repeats: whenever gasoline prices rise, news outlets jump on interviews with seething, red-faced drivers cussing at pump price displays that seem to flip faster that one-armed bandit wheels.

Well, not me. Not any more.

Maybe it's naive or disingenuous, but I think it's a realistic adaptive response to a circumstance I (like virtually every other consumer) have absolutely no control over. It's the same story I remember from the mid-70's "gas crises" and rationing days, when New Jersey motorists were forced to queue in endless lines on odd or even-numbered dates - depending on the last number on your license plate. Gasoline threatened to shoot up to a phenomenal $1.00 a gallon - a sure sign of the Apocalypse - and you can be certain plenty of folks practiced license-plate swapping to make pump visits on verboten days.

What could a driver do, besides siphoning a few gallons from your neighbor's jalopy in the dead of night? Aftermarket locking gas caps made their big entrance then, and no sensible car owner would leave their liquid gold unguarded without the modern automotive version of the chastity belt. In the days of cheap gas, only a desperate fool would have risked a buttful of buckshot for a few pennies worth of petrol.

I clearly recall when gas theft became the Next Big Thing to Worry About. Popular wisdom had it that the moment you turned your head, Those Damned (choose one) a) Teenagers b) Ethnic group of your choice c) Hippies would pop a hose in your tank to steal your hard-earned commuting fuel, so they could go on a joyride. Probably to drive out to some barn in the next county for an all-night pot party.

"What's the world coming to?" was the populist moan. "Next thing you know, you'll have 5-dollar loaves of bread and gallons of milk." I don't buy much milk-by-the-gallon these days, but can vouch that on a recent trip to a "gourmet bakery" here in Chicagoland, $5 bread is pretty much the norm unless you're buying a spongy white sandwich loaf. The sad truth is, higher prices at the pump are responsible, at least in part, for those $5 loaves and jugs of milk, and no change (or no change) in the White House will magically bring those good 'ol days back. Even duct-taping Howard Stern's mouth shut won't return us to the days of penny candy and quarter gas, as some conservative folks would have us believe.

Gas prices now are about twice as high as they were when we thought the sky was falling - and the big problem with fossil fuel is that you can't make more of it, nor can you grow your own. To this day, out in the American West, Sinclair Fuel's sea-foam-green saurian mascot makes no bones about where his company's product comes from.

The Real Gas Crisis will come soon enough some year in the future. Taking individual steps to preserve our internally combustible way of life for a few more decades can include using public transportation, walking, biking, carpooling, buying smaller cars (hello, Hummers!) or going 'Hybrid'. Our precious heat-compressed dinosaur corpse stew won't last forever.

But contrary to what our leaders frequently told us, our economy always ends up suffering more the tighter we cinch our belts...I've concluded that the world going around is precisely what makes the world go around. It may be wartime, and gas prices may be the highest we've seen yet - but I'll be damned if I'll let an extra few dollars on gas get in the way of enjoying a nice long road trip this summer.

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