A History of the Hampton Jitney / BY DAN RATTINER
I
n the fall of 1973, an advertising man I knew named Jim Davidson came to see me in my office in Bridgehampton to tell me of an idea he had. He was in his early 30s at the time, as was I, and he had a summer house in Water Mill and thought the time had come to do something about using less gasoline to get around the Hamptons. He wanted to start a unique bus service the following spring whose goal would be to help people get around the Hamptons without buying much gasoline. It would be good for visitors and it would be good for the planet. Would Dan’s Papers help him? I asked him to tell me about it. I should note that in 1973 no one was con6 | June 20, 2014
cerned with global warming. There was not even a hint that humans were throwing up too much carbon into the atmosphere. Instead, the concern was that we might run out of gasoline. We had, in fact, almost run out of it, or so it seemed. The year before, suddenly, there was very little gas at any of the gas stations in America. People were driving on empty, getting to gas stations at the last minute, where they simply parked at lines that went around the block when gas was available somewhere—noted by a sign saying so out front. It was a terrible time. Fistfights broke out among motorists when someone tried to cut the line. People could barely get around.
The reason for this gas crisis was that America’s own oil supply had run low, and in oil-rich Arab lands, the governments had formed an oil cartel called OPEC. Now they were just doling gasoline out in drips and drabs to drive the price up, and our government could do nothing about it. President Nixon pleaded with people to use less gas. He instituted an odd-even gas rule. If your license plate ended in an odd number, you got gas Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If even, you got it Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. For some reason, Americans tended to believe we were about to run out of the earth’s supply of oil. What could you do? In the Hamptons, the Dan’s Hampton Jitney 40th Celebration