The price of gas
I'm back in my hometown, the Tulip City, the Land of Lawn Care. In other words, Holland, Michigan. We drove out Saturday, our usual route on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the Ohio Turnpike, the Indiana Turnpike, and then up into Turnpike-less Michigan.
Gasoline is expensive here, much more so than where I live in Harrisburg, Pa. I paid $2.97 a gallon when I filled up before we left. It was about $3.08 on the Ohio Turnpike and then $2.98 in Michigan. But that last price was an aberration. We lucked out. Most places were charging $3.18 a gallon for regular. My dad said he paid $3.59 a gallon a couple of weeks ago.
The high prices are starting to hit home, and not just in ways you would expect. We stopped for dinner Saturday night at Win Schuler's Restaurant in Marshall, Michigan, and noticed the menu prices for meat entrees had risen significantly since our last stop a year ago. But I will say that the Lake Superior whitefish, which I ordered, was delicious. Never a bad meal at Schuler's.
WKZO TV 3 ran a story on their newscast last night about how the rising price of gas was affecting volunteers, the folks who do everything from deliver Meals on Wheels to ferrying neighbors to the doctor. I suspect we are at the start, perhaps two-tenths of the way along, of a great energy inflation similar to that after the first Arab oil embargo in 1973. Everything is going to cost more. Inflation robs the working man. Even if you reduce your own use of energy--I just bought a more fuel efficient car--you'll pay for the people who don't when you hand over your cash at the grocery store.