How to Live in a $4-a-gallon World

The following was submitted in May to the L.A. Times as an op/ed piece. It was never published.

I just got back from walking to the local Starbuck's, and I'm not happy about it at all.

The store is only five or six blocks northwest of my home in central Riverside, but those blocks descend on a deceptively gentle slope, so the walk back is an uphill bitch. Worse, I suffer from a scoliosis-induced uneven gait, meaning that by the time I walk through my front door with grande drip in hand I have second-degree burns on the fleshy part of my hand between thumb and index finger. It's hard to settle in and enjoy a cup of coffee with your hand blistering, your tee-shirt drenched in sweat and your pants stained with the same acidic substance the Aztecs used as a fabric dye.

That I would walk those five or six blocks instead of drive them has less to do with health consciousness than the high cost of gasoline. I drive a 16-year-old Honda, one of those supposedly fuel-efficient models with a tank the size of a sewing thimble. I used to laugh at the people I saw cruising around in their gas-guzzling SUVs. Let the other poor saps take out a second mortgage just to drive around the block, I'd say. My car could make it to L.A. and back with the needle on "E."

Then the price of 89 octane hit $4 a gallon, and the only thing I laugh at now is the bitter irony of it all.

Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline inflates the cost and size of everything. Had I decided to drive instead of hoof it, the grande drip now sitting on my desk would have set me back the price of a venti. Had I chosen to drive to the Starbucks a mile away -- as I sometimes would because the closer Starbucks tends to run out of my favorite scones -- my grande would have cost the equivalent of a caramel macchiato. I don't normally drink ventis or macchiatos -- I prefer my nervous system to hum rather than buzz -- but if I'm going to pay for extravagance, I expect to get something for the expense. So these days I walk for my caffeine fix, muttering to myself that I'm committed to tightening up those flabby ass cheeks when, really, I'm just a tight-ass committed to saving a buck.

The cost of a cup of coffee is, of course, the least of my worries when it comes to gas inflation. My wife drives an average of 480 miles a week to and from her job, and, while I work from home as a freelance journalist, I've yet to find a source willing to pay for my mileage. Between the two of us, my wife and I easily drive about 2,400 miles a month. That's about $400 a month in $4-a-gallon gas fill-ups, assuming our cars are in tip-top shape, which they aren't, and that we both stay within posted speed limits, which we don't. And that's just for the driving we can't avoid.

To try to ease the pain at the pump, I've been cutting down a lot on the driving I can avoid, like visiting relatives on their deathbeds and maintaining friendships outside a 10-block radius. This has proven fairly easier to do. Get-well cards go a long way toward meeting family obligations, and are cost-effective even with the follow-up letters of condolence.

I also no longer feel the need to rush to my mentally ill sister's side when she calls me in a panic over those dead people trying to get into her head. "Call me when they've broken through the foyer," I'll say, and go back to bed.

Most of my friends live in L.A. I'd always liked my friends, but at 140 miles roundtrip for visits, I had to ask myself: Really, how much did I like them? Enough to spend $40 a pop just to see their friendly faces? No. If they were really my friends, they'd be less concerned about our weekend get-togethers than my ability to put food on the table. So screw them. These days, I'm cozying up with the drug dealers next door and the guy across the street who sits on his porch all day staring at his Harley.

My newly abbreviated circle of associates should also help the bottom line at Christmastime.

In other words, living in a $4-a-gallon world doesn't have to be a colossal inconvenience. You just have to make a few simple adjustments. Just this afternoon, after drinking my grande coffee, I made the adjustment of walking out to the driveway and pumping five bullets into my Honda's engine block.

See how easy that was?

American Free

The following column was written in November 2003. It was never submitted.

Once, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought an American flag at my neighborhood Von's.

It was the first flag I'd ever purchased, not counting a bumper sticker flag I coughed up a buck for at a Costa Mesa Fish Fry. But the Von's flag, a 5-inch-by-2-inch rectangle of polyester glued to a plastic stick, was handsomely displayed as a point-of-sale item directly in front of the cashier and I found myself picking it up and admiring it, then setting it on the conveyer belt, on top of the box of Ding Dongs I was about to buy.

It was late summer 2000, a simpler time when the biggest foreign-affairs story was whether the Queen Mother would ever get around to kicking the bucket. We had just one quiet year to go before buying an American flag meant support for blowing up Muslims.

The cashier looked up and stopped ringing my groceries. She huffed and told me that the flag must never touch the ground.

“It isn’t touching the ground,” I said. “It’s touching my Ding Dongs.”

Unsatisfied, the cashier, whose badge read “Jamie” in bold block letters, reached across the belt and propped the flag up by wedging its white plastic staff between the Ding Dongs and the carton of 2% milk next to it.

“No one respects the flag anymore,” she muttered, and resumed ringing up the merchandise.

“Hey, I’m buying it, aren’t I?” I protested. It was important that the cashier know that I was by nature a tightwad, and that getting me to part with currency was no small business.

But she was unimpressed. She knew perfectly well that it was July 3 and that the flag had been marked down 50%. And it didn’t help when the bag boy, a tall thin teenager with more acne than I’d ever seen on a Latino, promptly tossed the flag into a plastic grocery bag and piled my produce, flour tortillas and whole wheat bread on top of it.

The cashier huffed again, and ordered the kid, who wasn’t wearing a name badge, to take the flag out from the bottom of the bag and put it back in properly. She had turned her back to the register and now stood facing me with one hand on the counter and the other on her hip, as if to say, "This is it -- this is where I draw the line. I will continue this transaction no further until that flag is set where it belongs, right atop your sissy bags of penne pasta noodles and pre-washed spring greens, so I'll know to my satisfaction that this flag, for which my forefathers bled, laps proudly in the wind when you carry your groceries through the parking lot."

The bag boy took this all in, and began pulling items out of the bag.

“Hold on a minute,” I said to him, and turned to Jamie. “Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable? This kid has just bagged a perfectly respectable bag of groceries, and now you want him to un-bag everything because you don’t like where he put a toy flag? Can’t you just let it go? I’ve got things to do.”

But Jamie ignored me and ordered the kid to do as he was told. He looked at me, uncertain.

“You just leave those groceries where they are,” I said to him. “You shouldn’t have to work any harder just to satisfy this lady's fanaticism."

“OK, you stop right now with telling Javier what to do!” Jamie shouted. “You’re not his boss! Javier, unpack that bag and put the flag back in there properly.”

“You’re not his boss, either,” I said. “And you’re not mine. I'm buying that flag and I'll pack it any damned way I feel like!"

I actually have great respect for the flag, but this wasn't about patriotism anymore. It was about property rights and customer service.

"I'll ask you not to use that language with me, sir!" Jamie said. This wasn't about patriotism for her anymore, either.

"Fine! Then finish ringing up my groceries and I'll go!"

"I will! Just as soon as Javier shows proper respect for the nation's flag! That flag represents freedom! Javier, do what you’re told!”

“Don’t move, Javier!"

But Javier had vanished. The customers who had been waiting behind me in line had vanished, too.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," someone said.

I turned around and saw no one. Then I looked down and realized the person talking to me, whom I knew from previous visits was the store manager, was a dwarf. I know adding this detail might cost my story some credibility, but I have to keep it real. The man was a dwarf.

"Look, that's not necessary..." I began.

"No, sir, I'm afraid it is," the dwarf said. "I'm going to need you to leave now."

I couldn't tell you exactly why, but all the fight drained out of me at the prospect of being 86'd by a little person.

"OK," I said. "But could I just maybe buy these Ding Dongs?"

"No, sir," he said. "And please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm going to have to escort you of the store."

"OK."

The distance from the checkout counter to the sliding-glass entrance was about 30 feet, and the longest walk of my life.

"Look," I turned to him, as we stepped outside, "you've seen me in here before. I must have shopped her a thousand times. You know I'm not some crazy troublemaker."

"I do, sir," he said.

"You do? Because this wasn't about that."

"Yes, sir."

"It was about freedom. That's all I'm saying."

"I understand," he said. "We'll try it again next time."

"I'd like that."

"Good," he said, and left me there.