Greg Bean

Coda

Self-service gas pumps: the horror, the horror! I got a real kick out of the collective wailing and gnashing of teeth among many of my fellow Nanny Staters when Gov. Jon Corzine recently proposed allowing us to pump our own gas as a way of reducing prices.

New Jersey - which first made self-service fuel pumping illegal in 1949 because the pols didn't trust untrained people (most of whom smoked) around flammable liquid - is one of only two states in the nation where it is still illegal to pump your own gas. The other state is Oregon, where people are so hopped up on coffee all the time that they walk almost everywhere just to burn off excess energy and drive cars that run on about three dozen D-cell batteries.

So it was pretty funny that instead of demanding that we drop our status as the nation's oddballs and correct the impression travelers get that we're all too dumb in New Jersey to work anything as complicated as a gas cap and pump nozzle, we acted as if Corzine had suggested something as noxious as compulsory nose hair plucking.

Within days of making the proposal, the governor's office was swamped with more than 1,400 e-mails and phone calls from people who said that pumping their own gas was UNTHINKABLE. Many of those complainers, and many people in this very newspaper office, have never pumped a single drop of gas in their entire lives, and proudly proclaim they don't have the foggiest idea how such an onerous operation would be accomplished. (Come to think of it, maybe some of us are a little dumb). Not only was Corzine's office bombarded, so were the offices of assemblymen and senators, letters-to-the-editor departments of newspapers all across the state, and talk radio stations, where they'll let the call-in crazies ramble on until someone reminds them to take their medications.

Sensing a political disaster in the making, Corzine backed off almost immediately in order to float an even more unpopular (and ludicrous) notion - taxing hospital beds - so it looks like we're safe from self-immolating ourselves while pumping gas for the foreseeable future.

But I do have a question. If people in New Jersey think it's too dangerous to pump our own gas, isn't it also too dangerous to check our own oil, wash our own windows and monitor the air pressure in our own tires? Bad things can happen when you're checking your oil, since engines tend to be mighty hot after running a while, and you could get burned. If you wash your own windows, you might get window cleaner in your eye. And Lord knows what might happen if - instead of filling your tires with the recommended 32 PSI (pounds per square inch) of air pressure - you flubbed up and put in 320, or 3,200. Do that, the operative word would be KABOOM!, and pieces of you would still be raining down on unsuspecting pedestrians six to eight weeks later.

So why don't we get busy and make a bunch of laws making those potentially hazardous auto maintenance activities illegal as well?

I buy most of my gasoline and get most of my service work done at a friend's filling station down the street from my home, and Jim runs a traditional full-service operation. When you drive up to the pump, they'll shoot the breeze, fill your tank, and wash your windows. If you ask, they'll check your oil and tire pressure. If you need your oil changed, your engine rebuilt or your car inspected, they'll do that as well. They'll even send a tow truck if you break down.

I love the attention he awards his customers, and I'd pay extra for it. A couple of weeks ago, however, he was closed on a holiday, and I was forced to go to another station down the road. I was in for a nasty surprise.

"Would you check the oil?" I asked the guy who was filling the tank.

"We don't do that," he said. "You have to check it yourself, buy the oil inside and put it in on your own."

"So this is a service station that doesn't check oil?" I asked.

"Right," he said. "No oil checking."

"Will you check the air in the right front tire?" I asked.

"No air checking," he said.

"I suppose getting my windshield washed is out of the question," I said.

"Nope," he said, pointing at a bucket and a squeegee. "Help yourself."

In the weeks since, I've talked to a lot of people and have learned that this limited-service business model is so common that Jim's idea of full service is the exception to the rule. At most service stations, I'm told, you'll have as much luck getting the attendant to wash your windows as you'd have getting him to wash your underwear.

That being the case, I say we've got to stop the neither-fish-nor-fowl hypocrisy. We've either got to follow the rest of the nation (forget those caffeine-addled kooks in Oregon) and make self-service gas legal and complete full-service an extra-charge option, or we've got to admit we're helpless Nanny State nincompoops and make laws forcing service stations to provide full service and protect us from harming ourselves and others when we wash our windows, check our tires and oil.

I know what the common sense solution would be. Sadly, nobody of my acquaintance has ever accused the folks in this state of common sense - at least when it comes to anything as dangerous, technical, dirty and downright proletarian as pumping their own gas.

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I sometimes read ultra-conservative columnist Ann Coulter for the same reason you'd look at a black widow spider in a jar - it's kind of interesting if you keep it at a safe distance. But last week when this nut job went on the air with Matt Lauer to explain comments made in her recent book that the 9/11 widows she calls the "Witches of East Brunswick" are "self-obsessed," celebrity-seeking "broads" who are "enjoying their husbands' deaths," she crossed the line of human decency.

I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, I think all right-thinking Americans will agree that this sort of vitriolic, hate-filled attack has no place in our national forum. Shame on her. And shame on Crown Forum for publishing her book.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.