By Nathan Barton
This popped up on my desktop this morning. That evil state legislature of Oregon, once such a bastion of compassionate concern and care by government, has terrorized its people in this new year of 2018.
As reported on MSN, the good people of Oregon, one of the Fifty States, are freaking out about the idea of having to pump their own gasoline.
Those evil minions in Salem passed a law last year which ALLOWS gasoline-sellers in counties with LESS than 40,000 residents (“rural” counties in Oregon jargon) in the state to STOP providing gas station attendants to rush out when you drive up to their dispenser pumps and set the little airbell hose off, to fill your gas tank. And presumably to do all those things that 1950s and 1960s gas jockeys did: wipe your windshield, check your oil, check your tire pressure, and smile at you. (And wipe your windshield without shoving a cardboard begging sheet in your driver-side door!)
I don’t know if Oregon gas station attendants still wear those cute little uniforms like these back in the day.
Notice that gas jockeys are not PROHIBITED in Oregon – just allowed. Some places.
But the ridiculousness and nostalgia might be enough to bring it back, based on the growth of Sonic Drive-Ins in recent years, with their roller-skating carhops. If you are willing to pay another quarter per gallon of gasoline, I suppose.
But this is the point. Until 01 January 2018, it was ILLEGAL TO PUMP YOUR OWN GAS in an entire state. IT WAS A CRIME. And it still IS, not just in the big-population counties of Oregon (as it has been since 1951), but in the entire State of New Jersey (since 1949) and some idiotic town in New York. And apparently in the entire country of Brazil – which made it illegal to pump your own gas (ethanol, really) in 2000, to “save” 300,000 jobs. The nanny state cannot – will not – trust its own citizens (or visitors, or even illegal immigrants) to pump their own gasoline into their own vehicles. Sure, take that 4,000-pound, 75+-mph projectile out on the streets and highways to carve swathes of mayhem. But put 10 or 30 gallons of flammable liquid into a tank using a system designed (of necessity) to be as foolproof as possible?
Which brings me to my second point. Apparently many people of Oregon are TERRIFIED of having to do this – and of being around other people that are ALLOWED to do this. Apparently the safety and lives (and environment) of the 4 million people of Oregon are threatened by this insane and evil act. Many of them want it stopped. Apparently so do unions and other Progressives. They seem fearful that allowing people to pour their own dangerous liquids into their own vehicles will be followed by reloading of gunpowder into spent shells, allowing people to administer their own medication, and – gasp, even choose what food to eat or school to go to.
I am sickened by the attitude of Oregonians. I have fortunately not been to that poor benighted state since about 1982: I’ve no desire to do so. (Disclaimer: my wife was born there in Oregon because an Oregon town had the nearest hospital to her family’s out-of-state farm.) These people do not know what liberty is – they are nothing more than wards of the parasites of the state, and it seems that they cannot accept responsibility.
Actually, why doesn’t Oregon just surrender its so-called sovereignty back to DC, give up its statehood, and just become a territory again? Or even just hand everything back over to Queen Elizabeth and the House of Commons?
Oh, yeah, I know why. Even DC allows you to pump your own gas. And so does the United Kingdom. Heaven forbid that Oregonians lose their “freedom.”
The Price of Liberty 
Most of Oregon is actually very conservative. Now that that’s out of the way – the population centers of Oregon (Portland, Salem, Eugene — basically the I-5 corridor) is serious fruit-bat territory. Everyone in Oregon not in those demographics knows that the change in the law will affect nothing but the bottom line of the retailers. Jobs will be lost, but not many: counties with less than forty thousand may have way less than a dozen retailers, and are staffed to reflect the traffic and demands of the local populace. Farmers and cowboys (and their women) have no problem pumping gas.
The price of fuel will not change a penny. Just go North a few miles to Washington, where it’s self-serve, and pay the same price. Go South to Kalifornistan, and pay double. There you get to go up to a bullet-proof glassed enclosure and present your cash or card up front to a sour-faced individual who couldn’t get a job anywhere else but TSA.
So. The people who are freaking out are those who don’t understand the law, and are just catching the talking points on the boob tube — just normal Oregonian drama queens. The ones we at which we point and laugh.
Disclosure – I live in Oregon, but am a born and bred Georgia boy. They hate me here. Life is good.
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That’s good to know. I didn’t think everyone in Oregon was bonkers, but you just never know. The people in California didn’t all go nuts at the same time, but I think they’ve managed it now. Anyone who wants to stay there is nuts by definition, I think.
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I’ll never forget the first time I drove in Oregon and I went to get gas. I got out of my car and the attendant had to wrest the pump out of my hands lest I dangerously pumped my own gas!
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I can’t imagine anything so silly as that Oregon (or New Jersety) “law.” My first husband managed service stations in So. Calif. Before my babies came, I spent many a day at the station pumping gas and holding wrenches. That was 50 years ago. I remember running back and forth with the green stamps, kitchen towels, dishes and glassware used as incentive for people to get their gas from us. I remember when the gas wars raged through the country… and the days gas cost 17 cents a gallon. Of course, my husband then made $110. a week, as the manager. 🙂
Can’t even find a “full service” gas station these days much of anywhere now.
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So true!
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