I brought it in for a perfect four-point landing next to the Shell pumps, handed my copilot 30 bucks, and he ejected the passenger seat to give command central the order--"Fill 'er up!"

It only took $26.50, and my youngest son came bounding back to the car with $3.50 in his hand.

"Keep the change," I said, somewhat magnanimously. "Put some gas in your car."

"Geez, Dad, get with the times!" he laughed, showing little gratitude for my obvious display of generosity. "That's barely enough to fill up the gas can for the lawn mower."

"Hey," I started my lecture, "when I was your age, $3.50 would keep me going for a week in my '56 Olds."

Whoa! Was that me, or did my dad just climb into the back seat? I sounded just like he did some 40 years earlier (of course, when he told the story it was more like, "Hey, when I was your age, four bits worth of gas would keep me going for a week in my Model 'T").

There I was, though, just as out of touch with fiscal reality in 2005 as my dad was in 1967. I couldn't believe my ears.

You see, you just never could discuss finances with my dad. He spent the last half of his life with his head still in the economic clouds of the first half. The older he got, the more out of touch he became.

"A hundred dollars at the grocery store? Fifteen dollars at the gas pump? What's this world coming to?!?" he would ask back in the '80s. "Why, when I was a kid ... "

We may have been paying the prices of the '80s, but his mind was set firmly in the economy of the '30s. To his dying day, he couldn't accept the impact of inflation--couldn't, and wouldn't!

It's not that my dad was cheap. In fact, he was pretty generous where I was concerned. He'd slip me an extra ten if I were a little short--of course, it always came with the 50-cent lecture on financial responsibility that he felt was his fatherly duty.

"Spend your money wisely," he would say. "Don't be wasteful, and save when you can. But if you need a few bucks, don't be afraid to ask."

Still, I'm glad he didn't know that I just spent 32 bucks to take my wife to a movie last weekend (including the popcorn and Diet Pepsi to share, of course).

Still, it's the price of gas today that would have really gotten his dander up--especially if he'd been with me over the weekend when I filled up my wife's Camry to tune of $40.91.

And you know what? I think I have to agree with him. After all, $2.619 a gallon for regular sounds a bit steep--especially if you're old enough to remember when the Sporleders owned that very same Shell station on Highway 9 and the price was more like 26.9 cents a gallon back in the 1960s.

Now I find myself falling into the same trap that my dad did a generation before. All that's really changed are the numbers.

His four bits for a fill-up became my four bucks ... and for my kids it's now 40 bucks. Is that what we call progress?

I guess all that really remains constant through the times is that fathers continue to lecture to their children on the subject of fiscal responsibility, and kids only pretend to listen.

It's just that my dad's 50-cent lecture of the 1960s is now my five and a half-buck lecture in 2005. Now that's inflation.

Want to talk? Give me a call at 408.354.3110, or write to dsparrer@svcn.com.