How old does a DUer need to be to know what a gas war was at local filling stations?

[MineralMan]

20. When I was 19 (1964-5), I managed a gas station

in Santa Barbara for a couple of months, while the owner went on a jaunt to Alaska. His rule was, "Nobody undersells us." Well, the guy who owned the gas station across the street from the one I managed found out that the owner was out of town, and decided he'd start a price war.

Well, I had my orders from the owner, so the price for a gallon of Regular kept going down. It didn't matter to me, because it wasn't my money, but it mattered to the owner of the station I managed. His rule was his rule. As was the owner's habit during price wars, I ran a big newspaper ad every day declaring that you could not find a lower price for gasoline anywhere in the city than at our station.

When it got to 11.9 cents a gallon, the guy across the street gave up and kicked his prices up to what was a reasonable price for gasoline in that place at that time. I raised prices at the station I managed to 2 cents less than his price. The price war was over, but not until it had lasted for two entire weeks.

We pumped more gas in those two weeks than we had in several months before the war started. The owner of the station I managed had almost half a million dollars in the business checking account, so it wasn't much of a deal to him.

When he came back, he gave me a bonus for making the price war work.

And that was independent gas stations in the mid 1960s. The owner of the one I managed was a character study of the first order. A very interesting man.