If you owned a car this May 9th in 1979, you were no doubt preoccupied with what number your license plate ended in. Because gas rationing was being enforced and was strictly limited to odd numbered or Personalized license plates on this day.
And of course it was topic A in conversation for most everyone, especially if you lived in Los Angeles or anywhere around Southern California. Los Angeles had no efficient public transit system to speak of then. And since many people lived in the suburbs surrounding Los Angeles, people relied almost exclusively on their cars in order to get to work.
In case you forgot how that worked: Odd–even rationing was a method of rationing in which access to some resource is restricted to some of the population on any given day. In a common example, drivers of private vehicles may be allowed to drive, park, or purchase gas on alternating days, according to whether the last digit in their license plate is even or odd. Similarly, during a drought, houses can be restricted from using water outdoors according to the parity of the house number.
Typically a day is “odd” or “even” depending on the day of the month. An issue with this approach is that two “odd” days in a row occur whenever a month ends on an odd-numbered day. Sometimes odd or even may be based on day of the week, with Sundays excluded or included for everyone.
The result? Lines snaked around gas stations. Gas stations closed unexpectedly. Fights broke out. People forgot what day it was. In short, it was a mess.
So on this day, the news was given over to reports in the field from various communities in Southern California, as reported on KNX-AM in Los Angeles. There was other news – it was looking like the SALT II treaty was going to ratified. The Hillside Strangler case was moving along and the Middle East was smoldering as usual.
And if you were around at the time, I’ll bet you probably forgot about gas rationing in 1979, didn’t you?
