2/25/12 WINTER SCENES, AND "AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE"

ICED OVER AGAIN

 BURDOCK SEED HEADS

EVENING PRIMROSE EMPTY SEED PODS

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  23 degrees, wind W, calm.  The sky is overcast and we received an inch of hard, crystalline snow overnight.  The barometer predicts sunny skies.
        Many plants, even just above-ground dead leaves and seed heads, are as interesting in winter as during the growing season.  Burdock and evening primrose seed heads contrasted well against the snow this morning.
        At fifteen I spent the better part of a summer managing a small corner gas station, one of those Nineteen-thirties little buildings that had a lot of architectural character and show up in prints and art work today.  The price of gasoline (three gallons for a buck when I started) would go up and down perfectly in synch with the stations on the other corners of the intersection, the prices supposedly set at surepticious  dinner meetings the owners went to once a month or so, but everyone knew the dictate actually came down through the company chain of command, every company’s price the same. Once in a while someone had some extra gas in a storage tank and there would be a price war, but it was over as soon as the tank was empty.  I worked part time and often more in the neighborhood gas station all through high school, college and beyond.  The pay was lousy (never more than a dollar an hour) but it was always there if I needed it.
        When I graduated from college with my bachelor’s degree I was desperate for money, and answered an add for inside sales reps for what was then Cities Service Oil Company.  For some reason I was hired and it was an interesting and well paying job, although far removed from my education and my desires.  In Milwaukee at that time most of the gasoline came in by boat from Gary, Indiana refineries.  All the different brands got the same gasoline at the dock, paying the same wholesale price.  Ergo, all sold it retail at the same price.  Each put in its own additives but basically as long as  the gasoline didn’t sit around and deteriorate somewhere, it was all the same. And, the gas stations, whether company owned or franchises were told what the daily price at the pump was going to be, and all complied.  Whether any of that was illegal price fixing I couldn’t say, but the end result was the same.
        The gasoline game has been non-competitive, at least at the retail level, ever since it was invented by John D Rockefeller Sr.'s Standard Oil Company (old JDR considered competition wasteful).  Sure, the stations nearest the freeways are always higher than those further away, but within those parameters the prices of the different brands almost always will be the same.
        Everyone has known for over a century that the oil industry is a monopoly, or a combination of monopolies, from the corner gas station to OPEC.  But, that's as American as apple pie.  Isn’t it?