Days gone by

Cleaning out a drawer in my old rolltop desk the other day and came across a Gulf Travel Card, a gas credit card from the early 1960s.

That card was the first credit card I carried, not so much because Gulf gas was all that great (it wasn’t) but because Holiday Inn honored the card for lodging and meals.

Those where days before American Express, Visa or Mastercard. The only way you charged an airline ticket was by using the Universal Air Travel Card, a charge card system owned by the airlines, and most hotel and motel stays were cash on demand.

But the Gulf card started a trend, allowing the traveling motorist to venture from coast to coast and charge his lodging on a gas card. A
girlfriend and I once drove coast-to-coast with only $200 between us. But we both had Gulf cards and they paid for the lodging and food on
the trip. Soon, others followed the trend. Best Western honored the Shell card. Quality accepted Sunoco and so on.

Holiday Inn stopped honoring Gulf cards in the late 1970s and the company soon disappeared, swallowed up by Chevron. The arrival of bank cards, American Express and Diners Club put an end to the use of gas cards for hotel stays although British Petroleum still uses a “Multi-Card” that can be used for lodging at some hotels.

At first I thought of cutting the old Gulf card in two and throwing it out but I tossed it back into the drawer with other relics of the past — including a Playboy Club key, but that’s a story for another day.