LUBBOCK, Texas — The “new normal” has become a welcome sight for this traveler upon returning to Texas after nearly a month on the road.
I am talking about gasoline prices.
There once was a time when spending $3 per gallon for gas would send me into fits of apoplexy. No more, gang.
I spent $6 for gas in California; $4 for gas in Oregon and Washington. Occasionally I would spot a gas dealer pitching gas for $3.99 per gallon.
I’m almost at the house in North Texas and today I topped off my truck’s gas tank at $3.19 per gallon. Good grief! I felt like the dealer was giving the go-juice away.
That’s the new normal for us who live in parts of the country where the cost of just about everything is less than it is in, say, the Pacific Coast, or in Hawaii, or the upper Atlantic Coast.
I noticed a billboard in California that seemed to boast about the fact that California charges motorists more than $1 per gallon in fuel taxes, which accounts for the unwieldly price of gasoline. Other states tax motorists far less per gallon.
I’m glad to be home, or at least closer to home than I was about two weeks ago. The price of gasoline causes far less sticker shock these days now that many of us have become accustomed to the new normal.