Sunday Drive Gas Prices for Bristol County

The life experiences of staff motivate much of what turns up in this column. That is the case today, as the void left by the end of Football Season has fully asserted itself and it is not unusual for your author to take to the streets.

That costs money, because to get gasoline you must have dead organisms (mostly plant life, but yes, dinosaurs too) get buried under layers of stone and dirt, have it heated and pressurized by the functions of the Earth, wait 10 million years, have a bunch of PLO looking dudes move in over it, have someone figure out that you can burn this stuff in a manner that heats homes and powers machinery, subjugate the PLO guys, extract, refine, ship and distribute it.

It takes a lot of time and money to do all of that, so don't be too unhappy if gas costs $2 and change a gallon. It beats walking to Boston. That said, a reasonable person doesn't want to pay more than necessary to drive the beater around.

We're here to help you with that. We check with the Massachusetts Gas Prices website, set the search engine there for "last 36 hours," and tell you the best and worst listed prices in town. After that, it's on you to decide if it is worth driving to Seekonk from where you live to save 25 cents a gallon.

A few notes on our methodology:

Gas prices can change at the drop of a hat. I pumped gas for a few years (I was never happier at a job, to be honest), and we usually changed over on Friday, before the weekend commute. There was a great deal of gouge-the-tourist behind this, but it is also when most people are getting their paychecks and filling their tanks.

We'd write this column on Friday night, but these gas price websites are user-driven, and it takes a while for the info to trickle in. Sunday is a good driving day (see intro), and with no tourists at this time of year, many/most stations don't lower the prices on Monday to favor the locals.

Note that, in this political climate, gas prices could suddenly spike. An oil company executive is our Secretary of State, and a simple "Those damned Iranians need to die 100,000 at a time. Pathetic!" social media message from the wrong orange-tinted president could double gas prices overnight.

We go to "prices reported in last 48 hours" if we need data, we'll try to remember to tell you when we do.

If you see a lower/higher price in town that we didn't list, use our comments feature below to correct us. That's why we list towns when we have no prices for them, in hopes that you- yes, YOU- intervene.

If there is more than one Shell in your town, it's on you to drive enough to find the cheap one.

National Average Gas Price: $2.228

Massachusetts Average Gas Price; $2.259

Price per barrel, crude oil: $53.57

GAS PRICES BY TOWN

Wareham
$2.23, Mobil

Marion
No Prices reported

Rochester
No prices reported

Mattaspoisett
$2.29, Mobil

Acushnet
No prices reported

Fairhaven
Best:  $2.17, Valero
Worst: $2.26. 7-11

New Bedford
Best: $2.09, Stop & Save
Worst: $2.39, One Stop Gas

Dartmouth
Best: $2.09, BJ's
Worst: $2.39, Shell

Westport
Best: $2.14, Supreme Gas
Worst: $2.23, Mobil

Freetown
No Prices Reported

Fall River
Best: $2.07, Supreme Gas
Worst: $2.47, JC Gas

Somerset
Best: $2.19, Stop & Shop
Worst: $2.24, Wilbur Gas

Swansea
Best: $2.17, Mobil
Worst: $2.19, Sunoco

Seekonk:
Best: $2.03, Stop & Shop, BJ's, Crossroads Convenience (top 20 range for prices in Massachusetts)
Worst: $2.29, Shell

Rehoboth
Best: $2.09, Exxon
Worst: $2.13, Cumby's

Dighton
No prices listed

Berkley
No prices listed

Attleboro
 Best: $2.09, NJM
Worst: $2.15, Cumby's

Taunton
Best: $2.09, Geko (but while you pump the gas, a tiny lizard nags you about your car insurance)
Worst: $2.39, Mobil

Norton
Best: $2.13, Speedway
Worst: $2.20. Mas Gas

We'll have pages for Cape Cod and the South Shore up soon enough, perhaps even by the time you read this...

Regionalizing Southeastern Massachusetts

Life should be easier. That said, there sure are a lot of towns in Massachusetts. I'm not even considering the irrelevant parts out past Worcester. Eastern Massachusetts is bad enough.

I grew up in Duxbury, and eventually moved to Monponsett. Prior to my move to Monponsett, I had never heard of Monponsett. You could write that off to me being a moron, and you wouldn't be the first... but it also speaks to the theory that there are too many towns in eastern Massachusetts for a reasonable man to keep track of.

It didn't used to be this way. Various kings of England didn't have the ability to commit memorization time to all of those piddling towns in the Massachusetts swamps. The king was a busy man, and needed his memory for more pressing matters. Memory is finite. If a man who is obliged to breed within a limited pool of people knows where Rehoboth is, it means that he may not know who that pretty girl at his coronation is. He might mess around with the royal scepter and become his own uncle or something.

You are most likely playing for lower stakes than that, but it's still a pain if you have some auto parts or pizza or something to deliver, and neither you nor your GPS can really say whether you are in Marion, Wareham or Mattapoisett.

How would Henry VII handle that problem? Simple. Eliminate some variables, just like one of those mathematician guys. You gotta know stuff like that to be the king.

A man doesn't have to know where Wareham or Marion is if Wareham and Marion don't exist. Call the whole area "Rochester"... yeah, that's the ticket. This also saves a monarch the bother of learning how to spell "Mattapoisett." Just think regional.

Similar regional logic applied around the area eliminates bothersome memory issues in town-sized hunks. Not sure where Mansfield is? Sha-ZAM!!! No more Mansfield. Think that Cape Cod has too many towns? Ka-POW!!! Not any more.

Queen Anne probably didn't spend part of her thirties pumping gas, so I assume that she most likely had more on the ball than your faithful author here does. When she thought about her Massachusetts colonies, how did she visualize them?

This map may help:

We use the same basic map to describe this website's coverage area, although we refuse to give up Weymouth and Hull. I've had some luck dating in Weymouth, and Hull is just too damn cool to give up without a war. We even claim parts of Quincy. If the website makes more money or if we get an eager and well-located intern, we'll include the Islands.

This map of Plymouth Colony is very concise. 17 towns fill up what is now Plymouth, Britsol and Barnstable Counties. Bristol County has 20 towns today. It gets bothersome quickly. Honestly, can you really tell me where Berkley is? (Editor's Note: South Coast readers can substitute "Rockland" or "Holbrook" for "Berkley") You can see why the royals did what they did.

Would this work today?

Some problems do show up immediately. I'm sure that Brockton residents would love paying for Duxbury Beach seawall repairs. Padanaram residents would most likely not align politically with the meaner parts of Fall River. Plymouth seems too big, as does Middleboro, Dartmouth and Taunton. Governance of these areas would be unwieldy at best.

Other things stand out when pondering a shift to colonial-era town maps:

- Freetown, a backwater these days, is one of the Big 17 in this alternate reality. Rehoboth also seems to have extraordinary influence.

- Freetown (and parts of Fall River and Assonet) was purchased from the Wampanoags for "20 coats, two rugs, two iron pots, two kettles, one little kettle, eight pairs of shoes, six pairs of stockings, one dozen hoes, one dozen hatchets, and two yards of broadcloth."

-  Plymouth looks a bit like Brazil.

- Scituate and Duxbury both enjoy a unique status as America's first suburbs. Building there was most likely spurred by the Great Colonial Hurricane... which is too bad, because we liked the idea of Duxbury being founded because 1636 Plymouth was getting just a little bit too crowded for one Myles Standish.

- Cape Cod is reduced to five towns with this map... Eastham, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth and Falmouth.

- Swansea, a tiny town these days, was also tiny then. They would have nearly doubled in size if a dispute with Rhode Island was worked out in their favor. They were also serving as a buffer zone with the Wampanoag-dominated area of Mount Hope, sort of a colonial Latvia.

- I'm not sure how they had the Worcester area worked out, but let the record show that Southboro was (and still is) north of Middleboro.

- The Mayor of Duxbury Beach claims rulership over Duxbury and all lands west to (and including) Bridgewater State University. She refuses to accept the various actions of incorporation of the western towns.

- Brockton used to be part of Duxbury.

- I think that Marshfield's borders have been unchanged since a 1640 dispute with Duxbury over Green Harbor was ironed out.

- Taunton could have built a Norton/Easton/Mansfield-sized casino within their original borders.

- Route 3 would have touched Scituate in this political (map) climate.