Sunday’s Forum
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
FILED UNDER: Open Forum, OTB
Mad Vlad is making Taco pronouncements now
TL;DR: The war is “winding down”. Vlad wants to “negotiate new security arrangements for Europe.”
Translation: I’ve lost many more times what I expected for far fewer gains, and these ingrates object being sacrificed for my benefit! Now I’ve no choice but make maximalist demands on Europe, so they will end my misery. It’s all their fault!
Where’s Beth? I’m concerned.
@CSK: I had this thought, too.
Drove by the Shell Station on the east side of town that is almost always at least 5¢-10¢/gal higher than other stations. Today it is posted at $5.499/gal for unleaded regular.
Three other stations that I drove by today are showing $4.999/gal. GasBuddy is reporting four other stations at $4.999/gal. GasBuddy also shows the Shell Station on the west side of town that is also often higher than the others at $5.109/gal.
When I was in Junior College, 1966-’68, Shell ran TV commercials that claimed Shell gasoline would get you better mileage than other brands. I vaguely remember an ad showing one car running out of Brand X gas as the car running with Shell gasoline drove right by it. A guy I knew told me he was going to buy Shell gas and check it out. A week or so later he said that the claims in the commercial were all bullshit! Shell wasn’t any better than any other gas he put in his tank!
@CSK: looks like she posted a story literally 10 minutes ago on instagram.
It’s captioned “Aww, my baby loves holding mommy’s hand” and there’s a photo of her holding the hand of a dramatically uncomfortable looking young man or teenage boy.
—-
(Unless I added some entirely wrong Beth on instagram and have been randomly following a complete stranger who is torturing her child)
@Gustopher:
There appears to be a multitude of Beth Parishes on Instagram.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Up here in the greater northwet, people have to remember that it doesn’t matter where you buy your gasoline, everything north of Sacramento comes out of the Cherry Point refinery near Anacortes, Washington.
Chevron, Shell, Texaco, the cheap guy down the road selling it out of the back of his truck, it all comes from the one refinery.
Greatest Grifter ever?
To paraphrase the Waco Kid, “…, the common clay of the American soil … , you know, morons”
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Which does not mean it’s all the same gas. When I worked in the Mobil Torrance, CA. refinery there were separate tanks holding branded or unbranded gasoline.
@Flat Earth Luddite: I hate to be that guy, but:
My uncle once worked at the Ferndale Refinery. He gave me a tour once. It’s still running.
The Cherry Point refinery is probably less than two miles away from where I grew up. Not super close to Anacortes. I can remember Cherry Point from before there was a refinery. There was this really cool spot called Reeses Corner, which was a bluff overlooking the ocean.
There is a refinery in Anacortes, in fact, there are two. The Puget Sound Refinery and the Marathon Anacortes Refinery. These are all within an hour’s drive of the house I grew up in. The fifth one in the state (and maybe in the whole NW?) is US Oil and Refining in Tacoma.
There are no refineries in Oregon or Idaho. There are some in Montana, on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.
Given the concentration of the first four, I can see where the myth comes. And Cherry Point is the newest and largest, and its dock accommodates supertankers (from Alaska). I don’t think that’s true of the others.
The building of the Cherry Point Refinery was a boon the school district I went to school in, as it was a big boost to the tax base without much of an increase in pupils. We got a whole new set of buildings out of it at the time.
However, it also ruined trips to Reeses Corner. So there’s that.
@Jay L. Gischer:
@charontwo:
Thanks for the clarification gang. Obviously, the 60s and 70s (to say nothing of the chemo drugs from last decade) have resulted in some really badly addled memories and information. Then again, we used to sit with a lit cigarette in our mouth while pumping 29 cent gas, so the number of working brain cells were always questionable.
Also, us Lynden area farm boys never could actually afford the time to drive over to Reese’s, although we’d all heard of it. I’d always figured it was a myth like unicorns or honest politicians.
In 1972-’73 I worked for Wides Oil Company a family owned business out of Murphysboro IL at one of their stations in Carbondale IL. The story that I heard that was confirmed by family members and other people that I knew from Murphysboro was that the company was established by Uncle Julius Wides who was a rag picker during the depression. He walked up and down the alleys of Murphysboro picking rags out of peoples trash cans, cleaned them up and sold them to local businesses. This is how he got the money to start his oil company that at its peak had 75 gas stations in Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri. When I worked for them Julius had retired to Florida and his nephew Louis Wides and Louis’ two sons, Jack and Bob ran the company. Wides had their own bulk plant in Murphysboro and at least two tanker trucks. Bob told me that he rode with one of the truck drivers to a terminal on the Mississippi River south of Saint Louis that I think was called Waterways where they would load the tanker truck with gasoline. He said he saw the drivers of the name brand trucks pour additives out of a one gallon can into the tankers as they were loaded with gas. He said that he did not think that one gallon of additive had any effect on the hundreds of gallons of gas in the tanker trucks.
Wides sold out to Fina in 1973.
The last surviving member of the family who had an interest in the business, my friend Jack Wides, died in 2025.