When I was a girl, my father would drive to the service station and an attendant would come out to the pump, fill up the car for you, wash the windshield and offer to check the oil for you while the gas was flowing into the car. If your tires needed air, he would refill the tires. All of these services were free with the price of the gas. If you needed the oil changed, a flat tire fixed, or a new headlight, the mechanic in the service bay would take care of it for you and not charge much for the little bit of time it took to put in the new parts as long as you bought the parts from the station.

Nowadays you do all of that yourself. Which is fine if you are handy with tools and have someplace like a covered and lit garage to work on your car. The rest of us have to resort to our own devices. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t afford to take my car to Firestone every time a little happens to my car when they are going to charge $100 for every little maintenance job. Last week I took in the car and asked for an oil change and a new air filter. The bill was $100. That’s absurd – I was expected to pay $35, tops.

I’ll have to find someplace else to take care of these routine maintenance issues for me, because I can’t afford the excessive Firestone charges.