54 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
54 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
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$1.99 TO ATLANTA
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By M.L. Verb
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Airline fares have fallen so low you now can fly to Denver for about what it
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costs to take a cab to the airport. And gasoline prices have fallen so low you
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now can drive to Denver for about what it costs to take a cab to the airport.
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I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but it looks to me as if someone is
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trying to get everyone to leave town. How else do you explain $1.99 (or
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whatever) airline tickets to Atlanta? It's eerie.
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What I haven't quite figured out is the purpose of the conspiracy.
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Is there a secret society getting ready to rearrange furniture all over town as
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soon as we leave to mess us up when we get back? It would take a fairly weird
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sense of humor to want to do that, but there are people in my city with a sense
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of humor like that.
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Is someone planning to move the whole city while we're gone? I guess that would
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be affordable at $3.59 per ticket from here to Houston.
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But why would anyone want to move the city to Houston? Except that Houston
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probably wouldn't mind. Houston doesn't seem to mind anything. It has no
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zoning. A city without zoning is asking for it.
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Maybe the idea is to sell phone answering machines. Except that if everyone's
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going to be gone why would you need one? The only people left to call you
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would be from out of town, and probably you'd be visiting them anyway.
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This is a puzzle.
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Other possibilities are more obvious. It might be the travel agents doing
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this. Do you suppose they have a cumulative chart somewhere that keeps track
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of the number of local residents who are out of town? And do you suppose they
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have a professional goal to hit 100 percent, the way telethon phone banks
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always try to have 100 percent of their phones lit?
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Or maybe it's the film sellers and processers who have an overstock problem and
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figure the best way to unload is to send everyone out of town with a camera.
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I tend not to have a conspiratorial mind, which is why most of these
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possibilities seem so ridiculous to me. But it's certainly clear that
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something is happening that bears investigation.
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Maybe we should form a blue ribbon panel to delve into this mystery. In fact,
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given the incredibly cheap price of airline tickets and gasoline, we probably
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could afford to have this group visit several other cities to see if the same
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conspiracy is at work there.
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And there wouldn't be any need for panel members to hurry back and report to
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us, since we'll all be out of town anyway.
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