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I own stock in Casey’s General Stores Inc. If I cashed in my shares right now, I could buy one delicious and quasi-nutritious Casey’s pizza every day from now until June 10, 2011, so don’t accuse me of failing to plan for retirement.

However, I had never attended the company’s annual shareholders meeting until Sept. 19, when I was among a few dozen who showed up at corporate headquarters in Ankeny. It was over in less than 40 minutes, and most of it was quite routine – the directors all won re-election by margins that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il would envy – but a few things caught my attention.

• Terry Handley, chief operating officer, reported various profit margins, including a profit of 13.9 cents per gallon of gasoline sold during the fiscal year that ended April 30. Then he said that the figure rose to 15.6 cents per gallon this summer.

After the meeting ended, I brought this up with Bob Myers, the president and chief executive officer. This summer, the nation’s economy was staggering and people were worrying about the damage caused by high gas prices. In times like that, if you’re making even more money than usual on each gallon, can you call yourself a good corporate citizen?

Myers’ answer was that Casey’s sets its prices to match those of the markets where it operates. OK, that makes sense; I don’t think I have to feel too bad about this as a shareholder. But it sounds like gas retailers as a group were taking advantage of the American public, so maybe I should apologize for that.

Gas pricing always has been a mysterious process. Myers didn’t offer to solve the mystery, but he did offer some insight into what it’s like from the retailer’s perspective. Casey’s buys gasoline from 31 different sources, and the prices change all day long. Sometimes the price of gas from Canadian oil can be a dollar different from the price of gas from down South. Sometimes the company will see a great price and jump on it, Myers said, only to find that the seller doesn’t actually have any gasoline to sell.

So, yes, gasoline pricing on the grand scale is as complicated as the National Football League’s quarterback rating system. Maybe I should apologize to America, but only in a really hard-to-understand way.

• Sam Billmeyer, senior vice president of logistics and acquisitions, talked about redesign plans; new and remodeled Casey’s stores will have the checkout counter in the middle to make more wall space available for coolers.

That’s because the coolers are where the money is. Well, the money is in the bank or someplace, but items that produce a big chunk of profit are in the coolers. People demand lots of cupholders in their vehicles, and they put them to use.

Of course, convenience store coolers are not all pop, energy drinks, juice and milk. As a shareholder, I have to bear some responsibility for selling cold, mind-numbing beer to people who are about to climb back into their vehicles. Maybe I can count on the good judgment of sensible Iowans. Let’s go with that theory for now.

• My favorite moment was when a shareholder asked why the company removed the nuts and frosting from the brownies.

People laughed, and it did sound like kind of a minor concern. But Vice President of Food Services Darryl Bacon – which sounds like kind of a made-up name for a guy in that job – provided a thoroughly businesslike answer.

Brownie sales had decreased by 35 percent over five years, Bacon reported, so the food people decided to “reinvent the wheel.” It worked. Sales of the new brownie, sans nuts and frosting, have doubled.

Casey’s rings up a 62 percent profit margin on prepared foods, so doubling sales of anything in that line is exciting for us stockholders. Let’s give this Bacon guy a raise.