TILLMAN, Okla. — A Tillman man who has kept a “Thanks Biden” sticker on pump 4 of his local gas station since June 2022 reported Friday that the sticker became invisible at $4.37 a gallon and that the pump, in his words, “is doing its best.”
The national average price of regular gasoline was $4.37 on Oct. 6, according to AAA data, up about 39 percent from $3.13 a year ago and up from roughly $3.10 in January 2025. It is below the all-time record of $5.0165 that AAA recorded in June 2022, and below the $4.48 peak reached in May.
“At $5.02, you could read that sticker from the road. It was bright. It was a very clear message,” said Dwayne Kuhlman, 58, a retired feed-store driver, standing at pump 4 in a windbreaker that read “WE REMEMBER.” “At $4.37 I looked down one morning, and it was gone. I don’t know where. I’m not saying it moved. I’m saying it isn’t there.”
Kuhlman bought the sticker for $4 in 2022, he said, and affixed it to the pump with a level. When asked whether the price he now pays, about $1.27 more per gallon than in January 2025, was also someone’s fault, he said that it was “not a fault, it’s a market.”
“A market is when it goes up and no one did it. A fault is when it goes up and someone did it,” Kuhlman said. “I am not against high prices. I am against high prices that are somebody’s fault.”
Asked who had been at fault in 2022, he said it was “obvious.” Asked how he knew the difference, he said it was “the feeling.” The Reporter’s data desk compared the figures and found that $4.37 is 65 cents below the record Kuhlman called a crisis and $1.27 above where gas stood in January 2025, which Kuhlman called “two completely different numbers, one of which is smaller.”
According to the station’s owner, Marlene Boyce, no one has ever seen the sticker disappear. “He puts a new one on every Friday. It’s gone by Sunday,” Boyce said. “I have a drawer of them. They all say the same thing, and they all go invisible at the same price.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center had measured the legibility of the sticker against the price. “At $5.02, legibility was 100.0 percent,” Teller said. “At $4.37, it was 0.0 percent, and the change in legibility was smoother than the change in price. We were not able to detect the sticker at any price under $4.50, which is the first time we have studied an object that can tell what things cost. Further study is needed.”
Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, said the sticker’s behavior was consistent with a principle of the pump. “A price is only someone’s fault when you can see it. It’s just common sense,” Brickhouse said by phone from a car wash. “If the sticker’s invisible, the price is invisible. That’s why it hasn’t gone up.”
Kuhlman said he intended to purchase another sticker on Monday, a different one, reading “This Is Fine,” which he expected to remain visible “at any price, indefinitely.”
He topped off at $4.37 a gallon, and he said he paid it with a smile.