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A very close and longtime friend celebrated his 48th birthday last Sunday along with his sister, another longtime friend. These people are like family. Their Mom was actually married to my Dad's cousin back in the sixties and that is how we all met. We generally refer to each other as "cousins" even though we share no blood. It doesn't matter to me as I would kill or die for any of them as quickly as I would my own family, which brings me to the point of this story.

I know that Kenny would risk his life for me because he did so in 1978. On a hot summer day we joined some friends to go swimming in the Beardsley Canal near Coffe and 7th Standard roads. We had been jumping in the canal from the south side of the 7th Standard bridge and dropping through the elevation weir on the north side. One time when I dropped off the wier something didn't go right. I didn't get deep enough to hit the current that would shoot us under the back current and downstream. I was trapped in what is like a horizontal vortex and couldn't get out. I tried hurling myself up and diving deep but just couldn't do it. I tried to swim to the wier abutment to try and climb out but would always get sucked back under water. It woulod take me down then shoot me back up where I could grab a quick breath, but I was tiring quickly. I will always remember looking up and seeing the ten or so people standing on the wier just watching me and I will always remember the roar of the water.

I knew I was not going to make it. I simply didn't have the strength to free myself. One time, as I resurfaced, I shouted for help. It felt like a shout anyway, then I gave up. I resolved to hold my breath till I couldn't then I was going to die. I was completely at peace. There was no fear of anything, no life flashing before my eyes, no thoughts of who I would miss, but just a calm I had never known nor have I known since.

Then, all of the sudden it was quiet and I was foating on my back in calm water and someone was pulling me by the arm then I was on the bank. I looked up and it was Kenny. He was looking at me with these big, scared eyes and asking if I was OK. He had jumped in on top of me and pushed down into the current that shot me out into the canal.

I lay there naked as my shorts had been ripped off by the water. I didn't even realize it until some guy handed them to me. I was too tired to even put them on so some girl did it for me. Kenny got me up and into his truck and took me home. After he left I lay there in the floor of the hallway under the cooler where, for the first time in my life, I pondered my mortality and the nature of true friendship. With no concern that he may wind up in the same pickle I was in, he jumped in and literally saved my life. I have never forgotten that act. I owe him my life and anything he ever wants or needs from me is his without hesitation or condition. All I have and am I owe to my old friend. We were eighteen that day and had already been buddies since we were about six. We remain close to this day and anyone, anywhere would be fortunate to have a friend as selfless as Kenny.

I don't remember making the decision not to waste my life back then, but I am sure that somewhere inside me, I made the promise, and my life has been anything but wasted or boring. Many of the fun, dangerous and/or illegal activities I found myself in since that day have been shared with Kenny. From a whisky drunk mud bogging session off Norris road in 1982 to sharing the beauty and enjoyment of riding our Harleys to Reno in 2005 to his birthday party last weened at Ethyl's, we have remained family, friends and partners in crime.

We both fought our personal demons at times in our lives, but we both emerged, not always unscathed, on the downhill side. Neither of us are rich or famous, but we are both doing OK and are both, in certain circles anyway, well known or, at least, notorious.

Since that day in 1978 I have fathered and raised three daughters, been blessed with a stepdaughter and thre grandsons, one of which is a college football star and will very likely play in the NFL. I have managed to hang on to a career job(29 years and counting)that has served me well and that I enjoy doing. I have won championships racing Motocross and playing baseball and I have become a proficient guitarist. I am outspoken and, for the most part, respected for that. I am a published poet and an avid writer on many topics. I am educated, well read and friendly and I have no enemies. I have been beaten, busted and broken, but have always jumped back into life without hesitation.

No, my life has not been wasted or boring and I think that makes Kenny proud of me, and he being one of the few people on earth whos opinion of me matters, that makes ME very happy!

I know that Kenny occasionally thinks of that day as I do, but I doubt he feels the heroic status he still has in my heart and mind, and I doubt he considers the lasting effect he had on my life, but I consider it everytime I see him.

Thanks Kenny, It's been a great ride!

I have been getting e-mails on how to bring down the price of gas since it first went over $2.00 per gallon. Don't buy gas on Tuesdays, Don't buy from this company or that, impeach the president, etc. Novel ideas, I suppose, but all totally ineffective.

It doesn't matter which day you buy gas, you're STILL buying it! American oil companies have a certain amount of control over prices, but very little as it would affect prices at the pump. The government has NO control over the price of oil no matter the name of the guy in the oval office. All they can do is create laws to curtail the amount of money a business can make by taxing profits which will only make matter worse. No, there are many factors involved in the price of oil. Actual prices that reflect investment to return, supply, demand, capacity, speculation and gasoline taxes.

Let's take Exxon, for example. The largest oil company in the world that everyone is harping on for their earnings controls about 2% of oil in America and it's after tax earnings in 2007 were about 40 billion dollars with a 10% net profit margin(half a percent less than 2006), which is pretty good, but those earnings are spread in many aspects of the petroleum market of which the sale of gasoline is only a part. This is a corporation that was on the verge of bankruptcy ten years ago. It was turned around by more effective and streamlined management under the hand of Rex Tillerson and had little to do with the price of gas shooting up. Not buying gas from Exxon for a month would not have a significant effect on their earnings. Not buying from them on a particular day of the week would have NO effect as you would still have to buy gas on another day of the week.

America is a capitalist economy. The market and its many aspects determine the price of almost everything. If we will continue to buy it, they will continue to charge what the market will bear. The government may place controls on pricing through regulation, but that is pretty much a thing of the past..Well..Today's financial crisis brought on by gas prices and the housing and credit markets may alter that, but I digress. The other role the government plays in the price of gasoline is in gas taxes, imposed by states and varying from state to state, but the national average on gas is about 50 cents a gallon. Changing presidents will do nothing to the price of gas and removing the gas taxes won't help much either.

There is no supply problem in America right now. The problem is capacity and we don't have enough. There are tens of millions more cars using gas today than there were in the late 70s when the last refinery was built in America. The demand for industrial use of oil products has increased a hundredfold. OPEC could up its production 100% and it would make no difference at all. We would just have a bunch of oil sitting in storage. Granted, we would be getting it at today's price and not the speculated price down the road, but even still, it would make little difference.

Ah, speculation. That isn't the only problem in the soaring price of oil, but it is the largest part right now and it's not the oil industry doing the speculating. The vast majority of speculators around the world have no intention of ever taking delivery of one barrel of oil. If you are a law enforcement officer or a fireman, just to name a couple of pieces of the puzzle, you may be part of the problem. Many of the pension funds in these professions are heavily involved in oil speculation to shore up their funds in the future. I find it highly unlikely that anyone who discovers that their pension fund is heavy in the oil market is going to demand that it be stopped. It's not always the big, bad oil companies making waves, sometimes it's the people we admire, or at least their future benefactors. Most of these pension funds are set up by unions, who we all know are in bed with the liberals. So stop blaming republicans!

We need to become energy independent and as long as the environmentalist lobbies are in charge of America's energy policies, that is simply not going to happen. Those folks need to pull their heads out of the seventies and realize that technologies have advanced while they have been living in trees standing on corners with signs. Nuclear and clean coal power would cut the demand for petroleum products by huge numbers. New refineries would keep production flowing with no bottlenecks in the supply to public chain and investing in the exploration and recovery of our own vast oil resources would insure our supply for a hundred years as we invest in alternative and renewable energy sources to make the demand problem even less an issue.

No single alternative energy source is going to fix the problem. Hybrids are becoming more available in full sized cars, but they will never replace big rigs, trains, RV's or pickups pulling toy haulers. The horsepower just isn't there without internal combustion. Fuel Cell technology may someday make that jump, but it is a long way off, most likely not in my lifetime. We need oil and that will not change anytime soon. Neither will gas prices.

The price of oil at its base is a matter of how much it costs an oil company to reover and/or buy it and when we are stuck buying it from other countries we are at the mercy of those countries and the world oil speculation market. Were we energy independent, the speculation markets in other countries(Great Britain is a HUGE part of the problem HERE)would have very little, if any, effect on our oil prices. Don't believe me? Go look up the price of gas in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

Had we spent the eighties increasing our capacity and investing in our own resources, the price of gas would have stabilized way back then and OPEC could hold someone else hostage. We are the only country in the world with fossil fuel resources we are unwilling to tap. It is ridiculous. There are even people who are harping about renewable energy, but not in THEIR back yard! What a bunch of putzes so many Americans have become!

It appears that many Americans are finally waking up to the fact that the environmentalists are a part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It stinks that it had to come to this to get them to see the light because it will take many years for any changes made today in our energy policies to have an effect at the pump, other than the price we pay OPEC may decrease as they panic in the face of our resolve.

Americans are not losers. Despite what so many would have us think, we are still the preeminent power and technological leaders in the world. I know many people who work abroad in various fields, and according to them, everyone still looks to America as a standard. We will drill in ANWR and off the coasts. Americans are not about to sit idly by while our economy collapses under the weight of political pandering and decisions made in foreign lands. History has proven that it generally takes a catastrophic event to wake us up, and the failure of thousands of trucking companies and dozens of airlines in the last six months is a pretty good indication of a catastrophic event.

America hasn't had a realistic energy policy since LBJ, but I have a feeling we are in for change alright, and it won't have anything to do with Barack Obama. It will be the American people who demand it, and that is just as it should be!