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Gasoline Prices
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.
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