Feeling pain at the pump

In this week's Eagle you'll find a story about rising gas prices and the effects on the local economy. You'll also find a cartoon right below this column about the increasing cost at the pump. The fact that this was in no way planned speaks volumes about how this subject is weighing on people's minds throughout the community.

Bigfork, for all its affluence, has plenty of elderly folks on fixed incomes and younger folks on small ones. For those people the rising cost to heat their homes or drive their cars isn't just inconvenient, in some cases it can be crippling, and there appears to be no relief in sight. Experts predict gas prices will continue to rise — some say to $4 a gallon or more — before the trend slows or pauses.

I feel like a senior citizen myself for saying this; but I remember back when gas was cheap (We walked uphill to school both ways. Barefoot. In the snow.). I once saw it for 78 cents a gallon at a station in Georgia when I was a kid and can remember it being 99 cents the summer before I turned 16. Those days, it seems, are gone.

The car, we are often told by the media, is a symbol of America. Our propensity for mobility, both in physical location and social class, is tied up in what we drive. We associate our cars with our identity, both affirming the marketing genius of automakers and creating a bevy of sometimes humorous — and accurate — stereotypes.

Rednecks and farmers drive trucks. Old people pilot Buicks. Annoying teenagers zip by in large-exhaust tipped imports with hip-hop music blaring from speakers as big as wheels. Soccer moms and secret service agents drive Suburbans and people from Missoula drive Subarus.

Whatever the vehicle, we're all behind the same wheel now, one that's going to remain a challenge to drive for years to come. Oil, ironically, is nothing more than the biological trash of eons ago. Now "black gold" powers the industrialized world and has us all stuck between the pump and a hard place.