Close Enough Call

A friend of mine, in whose car I was riding, expressed his regret that he had neglected to buy gas in the area we had just left. This was the other night, and I was naturally eager to get home. I had a full day facing me the next day, and while there's no good time to run out of gas, this was for me at least as bad a time as any. I asked whether he was in fact close to running out, and he confirmed that. I glanced over at the needle and saw that it was at or below the "E".

I don't know that I've ever run out in a really ruinous place. An LA freeway is a bad place to run out of gas, although I guess a remote spot on a rural highway could be worse. I did come close to a thing like that. Years ago when I was working at a summer camp, I somehow got back to camp from the town around thirty minutes away with very little gas. There was probably not enough to get back to tow. I was lucky that the camp ranger allowed me use of his pump.

On this recent occasion, we had no trouble. I joked about the car making that cartoonish coughing sound and my friend the driver allowed that his car did make that noise, although I don't think his speedometer made the slide whistle noise he claimed that it did when the tank ran out and the car slowed to a stop. We got to the gas station, I passed judgement on the looks of a man admiring himself in the little mirror of the convenience store's sunglasses display, and my friend gassed up.

I'm content to not have issues of keeping a car fueled. I did once upon a time, and mostly did fine with it. I did get reluctant to fill the tank when prices passed about what I regarded as reasonable. I now regularly see a gallon go for twice what I then balked at. That's not to say that gas prices are so interesting to me. It's really that crisis moment that is very stimulating, and this one was at least passably so.