Entertainment and history

My wife Susan always watches “1776” on the 4th of July (or sometimes just that holiday weekend). She also tends to watch “Band of Brothers” on June 6th or thereabouts. And — though I have less memory of that myself — my kids insisted I always showed them “Die Hard” over the Christmas holidays.

There was apparently another tradition I wasn’t even aware of. On one of those Christmas occasions, at the point when SGT Al Powell got the radio call while he was coming out of the convenience store, he stopped to look at the Nakatomi building, and the store’s gas prices were visible on the sign … and I exclaimed, “Whoa! Regular 74¢ a gallon, and 77¢ for unleaded? WOW!” And my kids laughed and said, “You say that every time we watch this.”

Well … every time, I was surprised all over again to realize just how much prices had gone up. We’re now at quadruple the cost Al Powell saw.

Somehow that has more of an impact than the clothes worn by the delegates to the Continental Congress. But then, they didn’t have to worry about gas prices.