Hours of Waiting To Fill the Tank

Even Houston gets in line

Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell, setting forth on his lunch hour to pick up a pin-stripe suit for a diplomatic mission one day last week, discovered that the gas gauge on his battered yellow Volkswagen read empty. From the top of a hill he just coasted down the slope--and into a gas line, in which he waited for more than an hour. Even James Schlesinger, Secretary of Energy and thus in charge of the nation's gas supply, found himself in a gas line. He had to spend 25 minutes waiting for his own gas supply. So although Washington's officialdom has devoted a good deal of attention to the abstract forces and pressures involved in the gas shortage, last week brought to the nation's capital a new realization that the energy mess is a painfully practical problem crying out for urgent action.

In Washington, in New York's vast metropolitan area and along much of the Atlantic coast from Boston to Miami, there was no more scoffing at Californians for having panicked over gas shortages.

Now the East was caught in the same frenzy to find daily gas and fill up for the weekend, when most stations would be closed. The California syndrome had also hopscotched into oil-rich Texas, and threatened to infect parts of the Midwest. "It's really a psychological problem," insisted a spokesman at the Department of Energy.

While tempers flared in the heat of summer's first days, most motorists experienced the trip to the gas station as a boring nuisance. Some were arising at 6 a.m. or earlier, then dozing in their parked cars near the head of lines that would later stretch to 1 1/2 miles or more. Some were burning up a quarter-tank of gas just in the hectic hunt to find more gas.

The crisis in the Washington area did, indeed, seem to be at least partly a result of hysteria. It did not develop until after the Washington Post predicted that shortages would develop--even though, as the Post later reported, storage tanks at the Colonial Pipeline south of Washington were so full that supplies were being diverted to New Jersey, where additional storage capacity was available. Washingtonians rushed to fill up. The cars idled in lines that encircled city blocks, as drivers paged through novels and newspapers to stay awake. For the first time in its three-year history, the capital's Metro subway system was jammed. The city's cab drivers protested the rising cost and scarcity of gas and won a ten-cent fare hike.

In suburban Bethesda, Md., Texaco Station Owner Robert Cooke was tired of the hassle. He had watched fistfights in the lines and been offered bribes by motorists seeking short cuts. "Women have offered to go in the back room with me. Once a guy cut in line, and a woman went up and tried to pull him out of his car. Sometimes you wonder if the money you make is worth all this."

As gas lines up to 200 cars long tangled traffic and tested tempers in the New York City area, Governor Hugh Carey was the first to invoke a California-style rationing system. It permits drivers whose license plates end in an odd number to get gas only on odd days of the month, and drivers with even plates to get it only on even days. Under state law, motorists and dealers who violate the alternate-day purchasing plan could be fined $1,000. In its first week, the system seemed only to aggravate the problem as motorists apparently became alarmed at the seriousness of the situation. The lines grew, especially in Manhattan, where the ratio of traffic to stations is high. The sellers' market gave gas station owners a free choice on how to dispense their monthly allocation of fuel. Some chose to keep normal hours, then close up for days after their gallons were gone. Others assigned themselves daily sales limits to stretch their gas, closing each day when the ration was consumed. Very few accepted the inconvenience--to them--of staying open on weekends. Carey asked all stations to stay open at least one day each weekend to reduce some of the uncertainty about service, but many dealers refused. Carey's request will turn into a compulsory order on June 30. As dealers grumbled, Carey promised that some of the state's allocation set aside for emergency use (5% of the total) would be made available for weekend sales. As always, sharpies found ways to beat the system. In nearby North Bergen, N.J., one dealer quietly passed the word to his longtime patrons to show up at 6 a.m. for a private tank filling.

Along Manhattan's West Side "gasoline alley" on Tenth Avenue, such high-volume customers as Con Edison, New York Telephone and ABC showed up at special times to get special service from their regular stations.

While New York's fleet-owned cabs gassed up at their company pumps, individual drivers who own taxis had a rougher time. Cabbie Joseph Mizrhi once waited a total of three hours at two gas stations before getting filled up; because of the time he spends on gas lines he now regularly loses $15 of the $60 he normally made in an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift. Some cabbies have found outlying stations that give regulars special treatment, like the refinery in Brooklyn where black marketeers would sell whatever the driver wanted at $1.50 per gallon. Tipping of $1 to $3 was common in return for a full tank of gas that might exceed maximum purchase limits. Explained one receptive gas attendant: "I like helping my fellow man and also profiting from him."

Motorists in Brooklyn were understandably edgy over the possibility of violence as they crept toward the pumps. Two murders had resulted from gas brawls in that borough. Andrew Medosa, 22, was shot and killed at an Amoco station, according to police, by Dennis Resales, 23, after their two cars collided as each tried to switch into a different gas line. Fritz Boutain, 29, got into a fight with an unidentified assailant after their two cars bumped at a Shell station. The other man pulled a knife, stabbed Boutain fatally, and fled.

The Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut also instituted alternate-day gas-buying plans. Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso ordered stations to sell no less than $4 worth of gas to owners of four-cylinder cars and $6 at a time to those driving higher powered vehicles--all in an effort to reduce tank topping. She asked every mayor or selectman in the state's 169 cities and towns to appoint a coordinator to work out gas station schedules so that some will always be open.

Gas fever has spread to Massachusetts, where Carl Olson, president of the Bay State Retail Gasoline Dealers Association, estimates that "there are 30 million gallons rolling around in automobile tanks that would normally be in the pumps." Local officials, including police chiefs, must make sure that at least one station in each locality remains open between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. A hot line has been installed to tell callers which stations are pumping. Dealers can request gas from the state's set-aside reserve for weekend operation, but police must first verify that they are maintaining the weekend service they have promised.

In Braintree, Mass., Sunoco Station Manager Bruce Weir was laboring over his books at 6:15 a.m. "I saw a fellow pull up to the pump in a late model Chevy Malibu and I went out and knocked at the window and I said, 'I'm sorry, sir, we don't sell gas till 7.' I started back and got two steps from the door when I felt a big bang on my left leg. I grabbed my leg. Below me was a bottle of Heineken's, half full. Now I walk backwards."

Although there are few lines in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, this is partly because the shortage in the larger population centers has diminished the flow of summer tourists. In Vermont, which has been advertising "Come to Vermont, we have plenty of gas," the wording has been changed to: "We have adequate gas." Throughout New England, according to one survey, only 21% of 659 stations expected to be open last Sunday.

A fourth of them were limiting purchases, and 18% reported being out of one grade of gas, most often unleaded.

Florida was coping adequately with gas needs until a truckers' strike last week blocked shipments from large storage areas in Port Everglades--and then the gas rush was on. By midweek there were virtually no stations open between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, one of the state's most heavily traveled routes, during the evening rush hour. Lines several miles long quickly developed in Miami, where waits stretched to as much as four hours amid sweltering temperatures. Radio stations broadcast warnings of line-blocked roads that should be avoided.

Along a major turnpike in south Florida, most stations would not sell gas to anyone with more than half a tankful, and then limited sales to about $3 at 90-c- per gallon--barely enough to reach the next turnpike station. In eight counties, including Miami's Bade, an odd-even plan was announced for sales. In a state depending heavily on tourism, Florida energy officials used their 5% emergency supplies to ease the shortage. About 50,000 extra gallons were allocated to the gas station at Orlando's Disney World and 25,000 to nearby Sea World. Insisted Deputy Energy Director Jim Pollock: "We're certainly not trying to show any partiality, but these are major tourist attractions and we're letting them have this to keep motorists from getting stranded."

As in much of the rest of the U.S., many Southerners felt the shortage was contrived. Declared a Shell dealer in Sandy Springs, Ga.: "My customers think it's all a ripoff, that the major oil companies are holding back. So do I." Reported Texaco Dealer H.W. Wayne of Atlanta: "I hear a lot of cussin' from my customers but they're not cussin' me. They're cussin' the oil companies and the politicians."

Allocation formulas failed to allow for the rapid population growth in Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, and so even oil-producing Texas was afflicted with panic buying. Governor William P. Clements Jr. imposed mandatory rules on gas sales in the counties embracing those three cities, including odd-even sale days.

Although not as long as lines in the East, the queues of cars at many metropolitan stations in Texas required motorists to wait up to an hour. On weekends, the gas-buying prospects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were bleak: virtually no stations were open on Saturday night and only 3% on Sunday.

The gas situation in the Midwest had not yet reached panic stage, although some dealers predicted that parts of Michigan and northern Illinois, including Chicago, may feel the pinch beginning this week. The truckers' protest was one reason for apprehension, the inability of a major pipeline running through St. Louis to acquire crude oil was another. The 130 Sunoco stations in Indiana were also running low.

Worried officials in all states where a gas crunch had started or seemed imminent could look hopefully westward last week to the state where the crisis had first appeared. In California, those long lines of May had disappeared. Instead, now that school is out, Los Angeles teen-agers have resumed their Wednesday night ritual of cruising; some 8,000 of them were packed bumper to bumper along Van Nuys Boulevard, drinking, chattering and flirting. The lines that occasionally appeared at gas stations were usually started by customers shopping for the best bargains. The tank topping had stopped.

Why? Mark Emond, editor of the oil industry's authoritative Lundberg Letter, credits a change in Department of Energy policy and a state government action for shifting the consumer psychology: The DOE permitted states to use their set-aside allocation to resupply gas stations experiencing the heaviest customer demand, while California authorities ordered all gas stations to remain open on at least one of the weekend days. Says Emond: "Easing things up on weekends was the beginning of the turnaround here. People have adjusted. The panic is off."

Actually, the calming of California was not quite that simple. The state acquired new supplies of gas as oil companies increased their allocations. That is not a solution that can be continually duplicated elsewhere. The loosening of the gas squeeze in most states may lie in both shifting the rules under which gas is sold --and thus eliminating some of the public's uncertainty--and, more substantively, actually finding at least a little more fuel to sell. Driving less, of course, on a regular basis would help even more.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.