Hunting for Gasoline

A couple of days ago I received a surprise telephone call. It was from my Uncle Frank’s cousin, Judge Raymond Bossmeyer. To be honest, I didn’t think Judge Bossmeyer—now 94 years old—was still living, so the call was an extra big surprise.

The last time I spoke with the Judge was about twenty years ago, when he acted as executor of my Uncle Frank’s estate. His call was motivated by information that there may be some estate funds we had not located by in 1987. As one of the four heirs, that sounded good to me. Money has been very tight for me over the past several years and my present budget is basically unworkable.

Toward the end of our conversation, after asking about relatives and the like, we began talking about the economy. Judge Bossmeyer said that he purchased his first automobile in the 1920s for $5.00 and gasoline then cost about 4 cents a gallon! Of course, that led us to the present cost of gasoline and the Judge stated that he did not know how the average family could afford to live these days. I tend to agree with him.

I have written about the rising cost of gasoline before. I have also mention the Gas Buddy Website. I used that site this afternoon to try to locate the least expensive gasoline in Louisville. The closest and cheapest gasoline I could fine (drive ten miles to save a penny or two does make since) still cost me $2.91 a gallon. I felt sad and mad as I put the gasoline into my tank. Paying $30.00—all I could afford—for three-quarters of a tank of gasoline seemed to me to be an outrage! After I returned home, I did some research on the Gas Buddy site and my concern and outrage grew when I discovered this chart of Louisville gas prices over the past thirty days.

I do not know what people are going to do. The cost of gasoline keeps going up and up and I understand that it is not unreasonable to expect it to hit $5.00 a gallon in the not too distant future. I much prefer being pro-active than being passive. I just don’t know how to be pro-active with the gasoline companies, especially when our president and vice-president owe their wealth to the petroleum industry.

For the time being, I suppose that the best I can do is search for the least expensive gasoline I can find. To that end, I have added a button to the sidebar at the right (immediately below the Louisville Weather Pixie, which is below the clock) of this blog which links to the Gas Buddy site and show the gasoline price range in Louisville.

I also attempted to add a link that people can use to search for cheap gasoline prices by U.S. zip code. Unfortunately, when I placed it one the sidebar, Internet Explorer refused to show any of the sidebar, although all was OK with Netscape.

Since I cannot put that link on the sidebar, I am posting it below.

Search for gas prices by US Zip Code

May you have good gasoline hunting!