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American Culture

Ice is Nice til Pass on Gas

Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock

We need a barometer. It will predict when gasoline costs too much. Just under $3 a gallon here in the Arkansas Ozarks. Everyone complains, but while we’re driving perhaps more carefully, combining errand trips, topping off the tank, we’re not all buying scooters. We’re not demanding that Ozark Regional Transit expand 15-fold, although it is exploring commuter express routes. We’re not promising a profit to the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad to expand its coach service from weekend sightseeing tours to weekday drive times.

The low end comprises the toothpaste squeezers, left over from parents or grandparents who lived in the Depression. How many minutes of your valuable morning are used to push the last goo from the Crest that cost less than 2 bucks? How much shower water runs without purpose while you mush the old soap sliver onto the crisp-cornered cake of 59-cent Dial?

The high end is heedless extravagance. The headline says it all for Gwendolyn Bounds’ “Small Business” column on B1 of Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription site): “After Bottled Water? Purified Ice Cubes.”

The story is comprehensive and thoroughly reported, quoting “manufacturers” likely retail buyers of this alleged product, industry association spokesmen and a nutritionist-economist. Gourmet ice is just being test-marketed at this point, but if bottled water can sell in America, ice must be an untapped market.

Icerocks, marketed as ‘secured spring water ice cubes,’ are set to hit the U.S. market in October. Four trays with slots for 12 cubes each will cost about $3.99. AquaICE sealed ice-cube trays — containing purified municipal tap water in plain, lemon and lime flavors — … costs about $5 for 50 cubes.”

The column isn’t clear if it’s displayed next to the Haagen Daz or in the beverage aisle where you have to freeze it yourself. Bet not the latter, when we now have microwave-ready macaroni and cheese for people who cannot boil water.

While public education and potable tap water are not in the Constitution, they are universal in America. The new ice, like bottled water, will be offered in flavors as well. Soda pop and frozen fruit bars, however, are categorized separately.

When we spend 15 minutes working out the last of the toothpaste, we’re showing obsessiveness. It didn’t save real money in the ’30s; it was one of the few things one could do to show you were trying. When we realize it’s idiotic to drive halfway across town to get a Wal-Mart price on gourmet ice, then we’ll know we’re hurting. -30-

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