JUST WHO DO THEY THINK THEY'RE FOOLING

I would just like to know why the closer one gets to a poor section of town, the less it costs for a gallon of gas? And conversely, the closer you get to an affluent part of town the more the gas costs. When the gas prices started to increase by leaps and bounds, I of course started to pay more attention to the gas prices listed on the signs looming over the gas stations I passed.

I found that as I traveled toward Detroit from my home just off 20 Mile Rd, in the main, the gas prices on the signs gradually went down. Sometimes the difference between 20 Mile Rd and Eight Mile was as much as 20 cents. Ttried to figure out a legitimate reason for the discrepancies. Never wanting to think the worse of my fellow man, I almost had myself convinced that it just cost the gas supplier more to truck the gas out to 20 Mile Rd then to Eight Mile.

Then I went to Troy to see my doctor. He is just off Big Beaver, or as we call it on this side of town, 16 Mile Rd. This time I was traveling parallel to Detroit from East to West. From Middle Class to Upper Crust. Guess what? The closer I got to my doctors office the higher the gas price on the gas station signs. Coming back I checked again. Sure enough the closer we got to Lake St. Clair, the lower the price of a gallon of gas.

I guess you might say that is pure capitalism at work. Charge what the market will bare. But I think there should be some modecum of fairness. I just do not see why gas station owners feel the need to raise prices just because the price of a barrel of oil goes up. If they have not had a new delivery of gas, the gas in those tanks under the station cost the station owner no more today then when they were last filled. I can see raising your prices when you have to pay more for the gas you put in your underground tanks, but personally, I think it is gouging to raise the price of a gallon of gas just because the price of a barrell of gas goes up. After all, it will be some time before that costlier fuel comes to your gas station.

I saw an example of that just yesterday. The BP gas station at Hoover and 13 Mile was charging $2.69/ gallon of regular gas at 12:30 PM, but when I passed it next at 6:00 PM, after the commodities market had closed with a record high price for a barrell of oil, I saw a gas station worker changing the price to $2.85/gallon for regular. And as I continued to travel home, I saw most of the gas stations I had passed earlier in the day, now with prices 20 or more cents higher than when I passed them earlier.

Now I do not know about the gas station at 13 Mile and Hoover, but I seriously doubt that all of those gas stations received a new supply of gas between the time I left my home this morning and the time I went home.

Can you make bathtub gasohol? I sure would like to try.