All Gassed Up

Weekending a tankful away

"The closing of service stations on weekends amounts to house arrest for millions of Americans," declares Jim Hines indignantly. As a vice president of Holiday Inns, Inc., Hines is neither disinterested nor powerless. Says he: "You're sitting there with more than 1,500 Holiday Inns in the U.S., with 20% of them at roadside, and you begin thinking, hard." The motel chain's response: the National Travel Gas Advisory Plan, with every inn "holidexing" daily into a computer infomation about fuel availability at some five nearby stations. Tourists who call 800-238-8000 can find out which inns--and hence which regions--are well supplied with gas. In the two weeks since the plan began, 1,400 people have called to inquire.

Other hotels within a fuel tank's distance from big cities have been advertising that gasoline is available to their registered guests for side trips, as well as their return home. Harry Kelley, the expansive mayor of Ocean City, Md., has become something of a national celebrity by appearing on TV and announcing a "secret plan" to assure visitors enough gasoline to get home again.

If hotels and resorts are battling the effects of the gas shortage, so too are Americans who like their weekends. "I paid a lot of money just a few years ago for my place in Somerset County," says Richard Pendel, a Pittsburgh steelworker, "and I'll be damned if I'll let those oil companies destroy my investment." Pendel's dangerous solution: to stash extra gasoline in the trunk of his car. Hardware and auto supply stores across the country report a run on gas cans, and in Texas drivers are installing special surplus tanks in their pickup trucks and recreational vehicles.

Such tactics must seem like small potatoes to former Navy Secretary J. William Middendorf II, who this spring had a 4,000-gal. underground tank installed in the front yard of his four-acre McLean, Va., estate. The tank should ensure him enough gas to travel about 10,000 miles a year for seven years in a standard six-cylinder sedan. So many of Middendorf s prosperous neighbors prudently followed suit that last week the Fairfax, Va., Board of Supervisors adopted an emergency ordinance prohibiting any further tank installations.

Suddenly, driving distances seem to be reckoned in tankfuls, not miles. Being "just a tankful away" is now the come-on for cottages, motels and beaches. So far, tourist centers within a tank of major cities have not suffered appreciably from the gas shortage: attendance at Williamsburg, Va., 158 miles from Washington, B.C., has actually been up, and Disneyland, which is only 27 miles from metropolitan Los Angeles, also reports increased patronage. Businesses in areas that are more isolated, like Las Vegas, the Florida Everglades and Lake Tahoe, though, have suffered. Overall weekend automobile travel in the U.S. is down about 15% compared with this time a year ago.

The trend will doubtless continue. This works to the advantage of railroads, bus lines, short-hop airlines and, ironically enough, the rental car business. For one thing, people who once drove to a nearby city may now fly and then rent a car, which usually comes with a full tank.

Meanwhile with gas allotments for June down to as little as 80% of last year's consumption, filling station attendants are rising in status. When William R. Bonnett Jr., 22, filed as a Democratic candidate for the Baltimore City Council last week, the Baltimore Sun reported that he "works at his father's service station" and even gave the address. Heaven knows how many voters may drive over to the gas pump just to pledge their support.

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