For sale. As is. Leaks on driveway

Idle hands do the devil’s work. The devil, not coincidentally, also invented voice mail, so there I was on hold, and I started doodling on the back of an envelope. I have a circular slide rule on my gaudy wristwatch that I like to fiddle with…whereupon, out of sheer idleness, I wound up estimating how much I spend on gasoline every year.

I spend this much: AHHHHH!

The devil isn’t in the details, or just in voice mail. He’s diversified into OPEC. I’m sure he feels right at home there.

Gasoline, yes, gasoline, has become one of my largest household expenses. And it’s a sneaky one: The cost is largely invisible to me, since I put everything on my charge card, so I never really have to see the dollar bills coming out of my pocket.

Signing a $50 credit card slip is as easy as signing a 50-cent credit card slip. But if I had to peel off two twenties and a tenner every time I filled up, I’d start grinding my teeth, and you’d see little pieces of enamel on the ground at Shell and Mobil.

Fifty bucks is a lot of money, but it won’t sustain my gas tank for a week. It costs more to feed a car than it does to feed me. Well, almost. It’s a strain on the budget.

My wife is therefore considering selling off this faded, rusty, battered old hulk, that spits noxious fumes, leaks on the driveway, and costs so much to feed…or maybe she’ll sell the car instead.

Ah, but here’s the rub: I’m a car guy. Internal combustion is my DNA. My mitochondria are powered by forged TRW pistons and high-lift cams. Yes, it is a very American thing, and I am very American.

* * *

And so I bought my first car when I was 16; it was a used, 1967 Chevy Bel Air, a true land yacht, bigger than the Nauru building but in far better condition.

I had floated the idea of this purchase to my stepfather, who rejected it in the most emphatic of terms.

So I bought the car on the sly. Price: $100. The fact that I didn’t have $100 to my name was no obstacle; my three pals, Gabriel, Carl, and Victor, fronted $25 each for quarter shares in it.

Symbiotic finance led to symbiotic logistics: Having four partners enabled us to hide the car from our parents, in a strategic, roving shell game akin to hiding WMDs.

It was a great car, it had a sturdy, small-block V-8 and a two-speed power glide transmission. Everything under the hood was cast iron, none of this namby-pamby aluminum crap. Even the dashboard was high-gauge, face-crushing, Detroit metal, none of this air-bagged plastic nonsense.

Carl and I used to ditch school on random days and drive the big Chevy to Mexico, where a 16-year old kid can find no end of mischief and fun.

My generation is the first generation of the MTV couch potatoes, but my pals and I were land-borne Magellans, exploring everything from the bars and beaches of Mexico to the remote, barren outposts of Utah. Dang, it was great…except for that one mishap in Rupert, Idaho, which I’d tell you all about but I can’t because of, um…space constraints…

Saipan doesn’t offer much in the way of road trips; even if the island was huge, the tropical climate is too oppressive for spontaneous car-camping. But the island is so doggone beautiful that a scenic drive is always a temptation. And I yield to it. Always.

Pondering the big, profound, global picture, it is a mystery to me why we don’t knock OPEC into a more accommodating posture. Those chumps have been getting too precocious and cheeky, and enough is enough.

But in the meantime, I’ll just have to keep digging deeper to pay for my gas. In economic terms, I have a “low elasticity of demand,” meaning that when prices go up, my consumption does not go down in a corresponding amount. I’ll just pay up. Most of us are in that position. That’s just the way it is.

After all, I’m not ready to ride a burro, sit on a bus, or get a rickshaw…and I doubt that you are, either.

Gas? It costs what it costs. Just don’t calculate it in yearly terms. Some things, like the work of the devil, or emergency room bills in Rupert, are better left unknown.

(Ed Stephens Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. E-mail him at Ed@SaipanEconomist.com.)