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Gasoline Prices
by Peary Perry
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One
of the more puzzling aspects of life for me is how the gasoline prices seem to
change in unison all across the nation within minutes of each other. It’s sort
of like those birds and fish you see traveling in the same direction and then
all of the sudden change and head out another way. Who tells them to do this and
how do they know? Who gives the order? The same goes with the gas price signs.
I have narrowed my investigative research down to a rather obscure part of
the world. According to the information I have received, a fellow by the name
of Malcolm Frizbo in Langendorf, Maine runs an independent service station. He’s
been there for some fifty-five years. Each morning he goes out, checks the mail,
reads the paper and then goes back inside and tries to figure out how much money
he will need that day to pay for whatever it is that his wife wants to buy. For
this humble perspective, he adjusts his sign out front to reflect those needs.
On the days and weeks that she is contented and doesn’t need much, then his prices
either stay the same or actually go down a few cents per gallon. On the weeks
that she wants to buy something special for their grandkids, or if she needs to
stock up on soup supplies for the upcoming church social, then he adjusts the
prices per gallon upward to reflect the need for more money that week. Once he
goes out in front of his station and steps on that ladder, the entire country
and its economic benchmark is poised to move once Malcolm changes those numbers.
After he has made his move, the station across the street adjusts his prices
to reflect the change, then the station down the street follows suit. It’s kind
of a giant domino effect on the service stations across the nation. Before an
hour goes by, the entire state of Maine has updated their gasoline pricing in
accordance with what Mr. Frisbo has decreed. Later on in the day, the pricing
structure has swept across the country and reached the far corners of every state.
As you can imagine the actions of this one man has far reaching implications for
almost the entire country. Perhaps the world. I wonder if OPEC knows how this
works in this county?
I am reminded of a story I once heard about the
gold miners in the deepest part of South America. It seems those hard working
individuals are not to be taken by ruthless persons thinking they don’t know or
aren’t aware of the daily spot price of gold on the world market. It seems that
the prices of gold as fixed each day is untimely transmitted throughout the entire
jungle by way of drums. So, it would probably surprise one of us if we were visiting,
to hear jungle drum beats on a tree log and then later learn that this is the
daily price for gold as just received from Switzerland or wherever it comes from.
And we tend tot think of these folks as living in some other century. Not hardly.
I suppose this shouldn’t come as any big surprise since locals have been
sending information in strange ways for years. I haven’t done a study of Indian
smoke signals, but when I get the time I just might do so. In the movies, you
would see the smoke rising from some distant mountaintop to give some information
as to what the wagon train or the soldiers might be doing at the time. I could
never see more than one or two distinct patterns to any of their signals. How
could you pass along a message of any sort if you on had a couple of words to
do so? I need to look into this a little further. As a kid I tried making signals,
but they all ended up being one giant blob and couldn’t be read by anyone that
I could tell. At least no one ever showed up with the ice cream that I ordered.
My Mother certainly wasn’t happy with me starting a fire in our back yard, so
I suppose she did see the signals and could read them in some way or another.
I suppose we all have one thing to be thankful for, at least Mr. Frisbo
doesn’t have any children left to send to college, if he did we could expect prices
to go much higher.
I wonder if all of his daughters are married? I’ll
check on it and get back to you.
© Peary
Perry
Comments go to pperry@austin.rr.com
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