Yikes!
$3.89 for a gallon for gas in Grants?

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — An unusual sighting Thursday alarmed and even excited a few people both in Grants and those passing in their cars, trucks and RVs on Interstate Highway 40.

Cellular telephones were pulled quickly from dashboards, pockets, purses and anywhere else they may have been, for quick verbal and even text messaging about the sighting.

No, it wasn't Elvis, it wasn't even a UFO.

Why were so many people excited you ask? A local gas station, adjacent to the interstate accidentally put up a gas price of $3.89 for regular unleaded gas. That price was 90 cents above the lowest gas price in town.

The cell phone lines jammed cell towers for a few minutes but that didn't seem to stop customers from stopping to get gas gasoline for vehicles not the gas from the burritos the convenience store attached to the gasoline station sells.

The price wasn't so bad, except, if you know how retail gasoline pricing works these days, you know that regular unleaded is the lowest price and each of the two higher levels unleaded plus and premium unleaded offered by most gas stations in New Mexico have prices that are about 10 cents higher per grade of gasoline.

That means unleaded plus would have been $3.99 and "Gasp!" premium unleaded would have been $4.09.

The sign was removed within about a 15-20 minute period and reverted to a much lower amount per gallon.

A woman stopped at the gasoline pump was asked if she had seen the $3.89 per gallon sign said, "Yes, but I buy premium unleaded so I didn't worry about the regular unleaded price."

Uhhh ... what?

They don't even pay that much in Montana or North Dakota, where gasoline trucks have to make long, time-consuming trips from refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and fight the herds of bison or cattle that often cross the roads there, or so it's been reported.

Maybe the gasoline being so costly is why the hamburgers at local fast-food joints, er ... restaurants, are so pricey.

Maybe not though, it could just be when they see customers driving up, they quickly change the price on the sign when people order double cheeseburgers, always of course with extra tomatoes, which, in addition to frozen beef patties, are also trucked to the restaurant.

For a few minutes excitement was in the air in Grants, but then it reverted back to the "business as usual" condition which is still bad, but not so bad.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.