This must be a spell!
Rob Price

The last time I was riding the Hornell Area Transit bus to work and back, gasoline was selling for around $3.50 a gallon. Now, with gasoline heading toward $4.50 a gallon, I'm back on the bus, and guess what: That bus is getting crowded.

The price of a ride has also gone up by 25 cents.

I started riding the bus a week or so ago, partly to give my aging car a more restful summer, and partly in response to the spike in the price of gas. In fact, as I write this column, the price of a barrel of light sweet crude - the main underlying value behind the price of gas - jumped by $6. Something about a Department of Energy report that oil inventories fell by 4 percent last week. Thanks guys.

Last Friday, the price of a barrel of oil jumped by about $9, to $139. Then it pulled back to around $131. Now it's yo-yoed back to about $138. At these prices I could be riding the HAT bus for a long time to come.

Classical economics simply don't account for the way oil has gone through the roof. Supply and demand relationships don't shift so quickly as to quadruple the price of a barrel of oil in less than four years. I feel like the scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" and Dorothy has just passed out in a field of poppies, and all I can do is shout, "Oh, this must be a spell, I tell you!"

The good news is, the company on the bus is very pleasant, and you learn all kinds of stuff you didn't know before. One day last week, the general conversation involved - what else? - the price of gasoline. People offered tips on how to avoid getting gouged at the pump. Try slowing down is one idea. Remember when we weren't allowed to drive faster than 55 mph? That's still not a bad speed for cutting back on gasoline consumption.

Another suggestion was to avoid buying gas on Fridays. That's the day gas stations allegedly hike their prices to take advantage of people's expected weekend travels. I have not confirmed the accuracy of this, but it seems sensible enough.

People riding the bus seem sensible too. On the 4:30 p.m. bus from Bath to Hornell, a lot of the riders are Steuben County employees. So are the riders on the 5:40 to Hornell. They walk out of the county office building, wearing pleasant clothes, and the conversation never flags as the bus wends its way west, first along the Conhocton River, then angling toward Howard and then along Big Creek, to the old Elsenheimer parking lot, where a lot of folks get off and climb into their cars, which they had left in the morning.

It's all sensible and pleasant - and there are times I don't actually mind the fact that the price of gas is forcing me to give up the individual freedoms available through private car ownership. Then my wife reminds me of how many of our neighbors rely on big heavy trucks for their work. Or I see a farmer cutting grass in a field, and I wonder how he's making ends meet given the price of diesel. Or I read about the U.S. dollar and how its falling value is partly responsible for the spike in oil; and I wonder how this country has permitted the debasement of its currency.

A friend - a local government official - told me this morning he was on his way to Corning, where a member of the Federal Reserve would be speaking on the condition of the upstate economy.

"Tell him they should start raising interest rates," I said, forgetting I'd earned only a C when I studied econ in college. "They're ruining the currency."

"Personally, I'd like to be paid in euros," my friend said.

I would too. The dollar's loss of value relative to the euro is as unsettling as the price of oil. In fact, a lot of financial pundits are screaming that the Federal Reserve's lowinterest policy is a principal factor in the oil price spike.

There's a lot to that theory, which even a man who got a C in economi can appreciate. I'll have to share it with my fellow bus riders one of these afternoons. We'll see if it sounds as good as never buying gas on a Friday.