The Editor's Desk

I’m very happy about today’s California Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage, though I know there are many people in our area who are probably not.

I’m leaving myself out of the decision-making process in the newsroom (a very rare occurrence) as I have absolutely no objectivity on the matter, letting the staff decide how to run the coverage of the decision.

I will be out of town next week for a business conference, but I’ll try to put something together as an editorial comment for Monday’s Desert Dispatch. My editorial will be one of my less formal ventures in order to account for my personal stake in the debate.

A couple of days ago I pulled in at a local gas station that shall remain nameless (I don’t want to get any employees there in trouble over a mistake) that was offering regular unleaded at $3.89 a gallon, pretty cheap for our area.

I scanned my card and had to wait an unusual amount of time for it to let me start pumping. I pushed the button again, just to make sure I hadn’t forgotten, but it was still about 30 seconds before I actually was able to pump fuel.

As I was waiting, I noticed something odd — the price digitally listed on the pump for gas was $2.89 per gallon, not $3.89. I figured perhaps this was a visual glitch. But once it let me begin pumping, I watched the numbers fly by and discovered, indeed, it was charging me only $2.89 per gallon.

I wondered briefly what to do. Part of me wanted to let the staff there know, because I’m well aware that the profits from high gas costs aren’t going to individual stations. I didn’t want them to get in trouble or fired for “undercharging” for gas. But then once I was finished and replaced the nozzle, the display went through an odd reset process, and the price switched back to the correct $3.89 per gallon.

By the way, Barstow is of course known for higher gas prices due to our location in the desert. Traffic between Los Angeles and Las Vegas increases demand for gas to get through the Mojave, and that drives up prices. Typically gas is cheaper almost everywhere in the state (except Baker).

However, when I drove down to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, I discovered gas prices were pretty much the same as they were out here. My previous experiences had gas prices at about 10 to 15 cents cheaper per gallon in LA. So even though our gas prices are extremely high, they’re not necessarily that much higher than gas elsewhere in the state the way it used to be.