Twenty Miles
posted in General |TWENTY MILES
After a pleasant round of golf, my companions and I stopped at the Grill to enjoy a cup of New England chowder laced with Taco sauce. Good zesty taste. As we settled in, we couldn't help but overhear a couple of guys at the next table really tearing up Big Oil. Unscrupulous, money grubbers, price gougers, rip-offs — these were the more polite terms – all because gasoline prices had risen to $1.70 per gallon for Regular. Granted, gasoline proces in California are higher than in most places, but I began to wonder if all of the condemnation was justified. I thought about it driving home.
Gasoline is black slimy stuff found in pockets under the surface of the earth, often in very inaccessible places. It takes some smart cookies to find it, bring it to the surface and control it so that it doesn't splash all over the landscape. Then it has to be transported to a good location for storage until it can be transported by railcar, pipeline, or huge ship to still another storage point often thousands and thousands of miles away. All of this doesn't come cheaply. After the latest storage stage, it has to be transported again to a refinery (a very expensive complex facility) in order to be converted into a form suitable for consumer use. Different octanes, diesel fuel, etc., etc., etc. Then as a last step, it is transported again to locations all over the country – all over the world. And in our case, to the local neighborhood gasoline station where we can buy it for $1.70 a gallon – enough to drive our cars about twenty miles. Just imagine the huge costs to get this far in the process. Rip-off?? Sounds more like a miracle to me considering where the whole process started
I hate to hear reasonably smart (assumption?) people bitch and moan about about trivial matters. With a buck-seventy in your pocket you can't buy a hot dog at the ball park or a draft beer at the local pub. And you can forget about a movie, a rental V-tape or a sandwich. In my view the best solution would be to take these kinds of folks out front and have them walk twenty miles. After 19 miles, ask them if they want to walk back or get a ride back for a buck-seventy. Either that or let them try to buy a gallon in Europe or Japan. That might restore a degree of perspective. Maybe. But in any event, don't try this exercise on left-leaning liberals who frimly believe that Big is Bad. Got that??