Published: May 24, 2008 10:29 am      

Gas prices anger area residents

By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau

COOPERSTOWN _ Sarah Wilcox of Schuyler Lake has to stop often these days to fuel her 1994 Ford Ranger pickup truck.

``The price is so high, I can’t buy very much,’’ she said Friday morning, while pumping gas at the Cooperstown Stewart’s Shop. The price of regular gas was $4.09 a gallon. Wilcox said she had allotted $10 for gas, enough to buy less than 2½ gallons. ``I never thought I’d see the day when the price was over $4, but this place is cheaper than down in Index, so I came here.’’ A few miles down state Route 28 in Index, the Pitstop was charging $4.13 for regular, Wilcox noted.

Next door to Stewart’s in Cooperstown, Taylor’s was charging $4.09.

Customers were not happy, but they weren’t taking it out on Jolene, the employee who was pumping gas at the full-service station.

``I haven’t had any trouble with people. They know it’s not me,’’ she said.

``It’s Bush’s fault,’’ Dave Barletta of Cooperstown yelled out his rolled-down window as his tank was being filled. ``He ought to be impeached.’’

Barletta’s brother, Sean, jumped out of the truck and agreed the administration should be taken to task for the price at the pump, which just this week topped $4 a gallon at most local stations.

As the Barlettas left, Jacob Baxter of Westford drove in to fill up his 1990 Volvo.

Baxter is a breakfast cook at the Otesaga Hotel who said the drive to and from work has been eating into this paycheck.

``I’ve only been driving about three months, but the price keeps going up,’’ he said. Still, with a job to keep and a gas gauge that doesn’t work, he said, he has no choice but to fill up and keep driving.

``Usually that costs me about $60 to $65,’’ he said.

A few miles to the west at the Fly Creek General Store, the price of regular was just $4.01 a gallon, and that’s why Brian Kegelman was there.

``They usually have a good price here,’’ said Kegelman, a New Jersey resident who has a summer home in Fly Creek. Asked what he thought of the rise in gasoline prices, Kegelman said he, like most people, has to drive and pay the going rate. Forrest ``Frosty’’ Misner of Bissell Road in Fly Creek said that when Bush took office, the price of a barrel of oil was in the $30 range, compared to the present $130 range.

``You can’t go around policing the world without paying a heavy price,’’ said Misner, who sees a connection between the Iraq war and soaring oil and gas prices.

``And it’s not going to stop here,’’ he said. ``I’ll bet we’re going to see $5 a gallon before the end of the year.’’

According to CNN, Misner is with the majority of Americans who believe gas will go to $5 a gallon in the next seven months. ``A CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 94 percent of respondents expect they will have to pay $4 a gallon sometime this year _ and 78 percent said they figure it will hit $5,’’ the network reported earlier this month.