It’s one thing after another these days, much of it not good. That’s my news summary for 2026, as the White House Merry-Go-Round of startling and alarming events spins faster and faster.
On Monday I checked gas prices at the Bridge Street four corners (“The Gassy Gateway to Vermont”) in West Lebanon. I was startled yet again. One station was extorting $4.39 for regular and the other was even higher, at $4.59. The owners should throw in a free stick of beef jerky or a discount coupon for an energy drink — not that either interests me. At my age bad food and stimulants are like playing with fire.
If you want to fret in advance, the New Hampshire Department of Energy reported that same day that the average cash price for heating oil was $5.47 a gallon. That’s almost two and a half bucks more than we paid last winter.
And who knew New Hampshire has an energy department? My home state is so cheap that I figure its top analyst is a guy at a toll booth who runs the numbers with a mechanical calculator when traffic is slow.
I guess pretty much everything comes through the Strait of Hormuz now, which explains the price of Cocoa Puffs, prunes and pork chops. Based on recent delivery performance, I suspect the Post Office is routing Upper Valley mail through the strait, for reasons unknown.
I’m not one to follow grocery prices too closely, but they are up, up, up. We are fortunate not to have three teen boys bursting in after sports practice like Vikings raiding our food supplies. As seniors, we are minimalists, and frugal. We get by on leftovers for so many days that sometimes I don’t remember having the original meal.
Still, some prices catch my eye and sweet tooth. Last weekend our market was selling a pack of store-brand brownies for $6.99! I picked up a four-pack and put them down fast. “Too much,’’ I said, with a whine and a moan.
I will pay too much for a brownie, but only if the baker is local, practices mindfulness, shops at co-ops and has a “Practice Radical Kindness” bumper sticker on her 1988 Saab (or Volvo).
I was so put off that I bought a pack of generic “fudge”-covered graham crackers instead. They were cheap, and thoroughly mediocre. I could sweep the garage floor and sprinkle sugar on the dust/dirt/sand pile and it might be as tasty.
But I’m not that desperate — yet.
I don’t know if we’re in a gas crisis, or just a very annoying blip, but I remember the one in 1973 that shocked Americans who thought they’d always be able to see the USA in their Chevrolet, anytime they wanted, in gas-guzzling sedans so big you could fit three kids, a beer cooler, grandma and six bags of groceries (including several pounds of paper-wrapped haddock) in the back seat.
As I recall, gas prices were around 35 cents and jumped to over 50 when the oil embargo started. (Same old trouble in the Middle East.) That doesn’t sound like much but quarters and half-dollars could actually buy things then.
The real crisis was that supply could not meet panic demand, when nearly every American driver hopped into their big American car and raced at once to gas stations to fill ’er up.
Long lines ensued. Some stations ran dry. I don’t know if psychiatrists will back me up on this, but I think drivers were traumatized by so much time listening to AM radios in those lines. The top hits that year were “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” and “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown.” They might have been fun to sing at weddings, but if people under stress were subjected to seven to 12 repetitions while waiting for an hour with low to moderate levels of carbon monoxide leaking in from cheapo mufflers — well, it might explain why this nation has never shaken off its existential funk — and the rise of disco.
I don’t want to get overly political. None of us want higher gas prices, and even libs like me thought That Guy in the White House (or whatever’s left of it) would do a decent job keeping petroleum prices down, even if environmental effects were a whole ’nother kettle of fish (“Drill, Baby, Drill”).
Right now I’m looking at something like an extra $1,500 or more for heating oil next winter. That was supposed to go toward wild indulgences, like paying Lebanon’s rising property taxes.
Maybe expensive brownies are out. I say America — and the world — are none the better for it.
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
