Reply #15: not exactly 'big bucks' but it IS where

[Bluerthanblue]

they make the 'bread and butter' of the business. I have a friend who owns our local gas station/convenience store, and he's had a hell of a time lately. Our town has only 1,000 year round residents, and no grocery store any longer.
He is from India, and runs the store 7 days a week, 16 hrs. per day- ONE 'drive off' costs him 1,000 gals. of gas to simply break-even. He's a really gentle, friendly, caring man, and doesn't want to do anything other than make a life for himself and his family. While running in for a loaf of bread, or a gallon of milk may cost almost twice what we can get it for at the big stores in the closest town to us, the cost of gas getting there isn't really worth it anymore.
Beer, chips, and smokes keep him going.- Unless you have an actual 'service station' where you make your money repairing vehicles, and doing inspections etc, there is no living to be made on pumping gas- at least not here in northern new england.

And tourism is KEY to making it, or going under- swim, and ski leaf peepers, and hunters fuel this sad economy.- All of which are effected by 'fuel costs' such as what we are experiencing now.

It's no easy life for him-