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It’s time for Legislature to ditch 1951 ban on self-service gas

To the list of activities most of us should be able to handle without a lot of hand holding, add this one: pumping gas.

The Legislature has yet again — sigh — taken up the 1951 law that makes Oregon just one of two states in the nation (the other is New Jersey) to ban self-service gas stations. Legislators like this subject enough to propose changing the law every time they get together in Salem but never enough to do something about it.

This time, we hope they will.

Despite claims to the contrary, there’s very little reason to continue banning self-service gas, except that some Oregonians don’t particularly want to get out of their cars to do the pumping.

Oregon’s law against self-service originally rose from safety concerns, but it has become clear in five decades that safety is a non-issue elsewhere. Most people manage to pump gas without spilling any on their pants, let alone setting themselves on fire. If they breathe gas fumes while pumping, they at least breathe them in fresh air rather than while waiting in the car.

Self-serve is like having no service, opponents say, but in fact many of Oregon’s gas stations already offer nearly no service — attendants swipe our debit cards through a device at the pump and call it good, or pump our gas and then force us out of the car to pay. All while charging us gas prices that routinely are among the nation’s highest and telling us we’re getting good service.

The silliest argument of all against self-service must be this one — that Oregonians shouldn’t be pumping their own gas because it rains here. All together, now: Awww.

The only anti-self-service argument that makes any sense comes from people who can’t pump their own gas. They worry they will pay more than everyone else and will have fewer places to pump if self-service becomes the norm.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, however, requires that they get service at no extra cost at stations with both full- and self-service pumps. A self-service bill proposed this session by Sen. Randy Miller, a Lake Oswego Republican, goes a step further by requiring all stations to offer service to people who are 55 and older or disabled or who have a medical condition that makes pumping dangerous or impossible.

We suggest this additional requirement: that stations be allowed to charge no more than 5 cents a gallon more for full-service gas than for self-service fuel. That would guarantee a reasonable alternative to people who simply don’t want to pump their own while allowing the stations to pay for service employees.

It also would do away with the last rational argument opponents could possibly make for keeping the 50-year-old ban. Sure, it’s easier to stay in the car. Otherwise, though, there’s simply no reason most of us shouldn’t pump our own gas.

Could this be the year the Legislature figures that out as well?

By Russell Sadler

We have a problem. It’s not a huge problem on the world’s long list of huge problems. It affects only that part of the world that uses the Gregorian calendar. But it affects us every day and the problem will get worse. Here’s the problem:

How do we officially pronounce the name of the new millennium? How do you say the year 2001?

The tastemakers in the broadcast media are pronouncing it two thousand one. Perhaps that reflects the pronunciation of the title of the Stanley Kubrick film based on the Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi novel "2001: A Space Odyssey," or perhaps it is just a leftover from the year 2000. But it won’t do for a permanent name.

What are we going to do when get to 2010? Are we going to call it two thousand ten? Or are we more likely to call it twenty-ten as in 2010: Odyssey Two by the same prolific Clarke?

What are we going to do when the chronological odometer turns 2101? Are we going to call it two thousand-one hundred and one? Or are we going to say twenty-one-oh-one? History is on the side of the latter.

Lewis and Clark began their epic voyage west in 1804 — that’s eighteen-oh four and returned in 1806 — as in eighteen-oh-six.

Oregon became a territory of the United States in 1849 as in eighteen forty-nine and a state in 1859 — that’s eighteen fifty-nine.

Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859 — as in eighteen fifty-nine.

We say nineteen hundred and nineteen-oh-one. The stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression was in 1929, as in nineteen twenty-nine.

I suspect we are going to call 2010 — twenty-ten — that is if the corporation that makes the windshield washer fluid hasn’t trademarked the name and doesn’t insist on charging us royalties every time we use it.

I suspect we will call 2101 — twenty-one-oh-one. You can still hear old-timers say, "back in ought one we walked a mile to school in the rain and snow. You kids are soft nowadays." The old-timer means nineteen-oh-one, of course.

We’ll be saying — if we make it — "back in oh-one we had to take a bus to school," complaining how easy kids have it being teleported to school in twenty-one-oh-one. Beam me up, Scotty.

Change in something as fundamental as the expression of time often comes slowly. The Gregorian calendar was developed by Jesuit scholar Christopher Clavius, who lived from 1537 to 1612.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull officially adopting the new calendar. It was resisted because that great scuffle between Protestants and Catholics — the Reformation — was already under way. Roman Catholics used it but no one else did. England kept the Julian calendar until 1752!

Colonization and international trade pressured the rest of the world to use the Gregorian calendar, but it really didn’t become universal until 1912.

Charles Osgood uses twenty-oh-one on his Sunday Morning feature program on CBS. He is the only member of the media I’ve heard using the term. Most everyone else is saying two thousand one. What’s your opinion? Let the editor know. This matter is too important to leave to the arbitrary tastes of broadcasters!

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