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Gasoline memories and realities...

I remember a time, when I was about 8 or 9 years old, my mother was painting one of the rooms in our house and needed something to clean her paint brush. She handed me a quarter and a gallon jug and told me to go to the store on the corner and buy a gallon of gasoline. Back then, it was more economical to use gas to clean a paint brush than it was to go buy a can of paint thinner. What a concept!

The other day my son Peter earned a trip to the movie of his choice. He wanted to see Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D. The movie was playing at three theaters. The theatre closest to our house was charging $9/person admission, and the other two were charging only $7/person. Our first impulse was to go to the more distant, but cheaper theater. But then we started thinking about how much the gas would cost to drive our Dodge van. When we did the math, it worked out that it was less expensive to go to the closer theatre and pay the higher admission price.

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