I'll Never Do That Again

I’ll Never Do That Again

by

Burt Sage

“You want my most embarrassing moment?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Fred says. “I thought it would be a good way to get us going tonight.”

Our next door neighbors, Fred and Susan, are over for our regular Saturday night get together. Every other Saturday night they come over here; on alternating nights Karen and I go over to their place. We have dinner and then talk about the old days, current events, etc., but never politics. The visiting couple gets to choose the initial topic of conversation, and for tonight Fred and Susan have picked embarrassing moments.

“Which one?” I ask myself. There are so many. But there’s one that really stands out.

“OK,” I say. “It was back in the early 2000’s. Karen and I had decided to visit our son in San Diego. Instead of flying out, we would drive. I had just bought a Prius, and the forty or so gallons of gas would cost only about a hundred dollars each way. It was much cheaper than airfare, and we would have a familiar car at our disposal while we were there. We had always said that driving across the country was something we wanted to do. You know, see the country up close, and now was as good a time as any.”

“And the highways were good. Interstate all the way. I-30 down to Fort Worth, then I-20 through much of Texas, picking up I-10 in west Texas. At Casa Grande, NM we would take I-8 for the rest of the trip to San Diego.”

“It was a typical hot, dry, and windy summer’s day with the temperature in the low 100’s as we left I-10 in Casa Grande to take I-8,” I continued. “I distinctly remember Karen saying that we should buy gas because the country down through New Mexico and Arizona was pretty desolate. But I had looked at the trip odometer I had reset at the last fill up. We had gone 450 miles and Gila Bend was only 60 miles away. We’d still have a hundred miles of gas left when we got to Gila Bend. ‘Why waste time filling up now.’ I thought. So we pressed on.”

“I also remember the sign as we entered I-8. No services next 58 miles.”

“We had gone about 30 miles when I looked down at the speedometer to check my speed. Right beside it was a flashing yellow image of a gas pump. It was the ‘low fuel’ warning light. It meant that I only had about 25 miles of fuel left.”

“How is this possible,” I ask myself. Even though the air conditioning is cooling the car well, beads of sweat are forming on my brow. Casa Grande is 30 miles behind us, and the next ‘service’ is more than 25 miles ahead of us.

“I’ve got to find some gas!” I say to myself.

“I screwed up,” I say to Karen. “I need to find some gas. We have only about 25 miles of gas left.”

“I TOLD you that we should have gotten gas back on I-10,” she says, in her most sarcastic voice. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

I look over at Karen. She’s slumped down in her seat, arms folded across her chest, and looking straight ahead, expressionless. But I know she’s exhausted the thesaurus of synonyms for words like idiot, moron, and imbecile.

I slow down a bit to think. I’m racking my brain for some ideas on what to do, when we approach an intersection. On the right side of the highway there’s a hand-made sign that reads Construction site with an arrow pointing to the exit ramp.

“A construction site?” I say to myself. “That means workers and pickup trucks and all kinds of equipment. Surely I can buy some gas from one of the workers. We can siphon it from his truck to my car.”

So I pull off. The intersection is not a typical interstate intersection. Normally there would be a couple of gas stations and a restaurant and maybe a motel. Here? The only evidence of human existence besides the highway itself is a YIELD sign.

As we head north, the countryside becomes even more desolate. Just miles and miles of miles and miles. Not even the slightest sign of life. I want to say God-forsaken, but clearly that’s wrong. God is here in His full majesty in the rugged beauty of the sand and sage and mountain vistas. But in my present state of mind I can’t appreciate it.

After several miles I see a cloud of dust up ahead. “That must be the construction sight,” I say to myself.

Then the gas engine on my Prius quits. It’s out of gas. I only have maybe 5 miles left on battery power.

It’s enough. I pull into the construction sight and it’s exactly how I envisioned it. A couple of dozen cars are parked randomly around; at least half are four wheel drive Yukons or Tundras or the like. And there’s an RV off to one side with power and telephone lines leading to it. “Worst case,” I say to myself, “I can call AAA.”

There’s a sign on the RV door that reads “Office”, so I knock.

“Come on in,” a loud manly voice shouts.

I open the door and survey the inside of the RV. At one end there’s an enormous, well-tanned older man sitting behind a desk at least three sizes too small. There’s a woman sitting behind a second much-closer desk doing some typing. It’s air conditioned, and there’s a telephone on each desk.

“What can we do you for?” the man asks, good naturedly.

I explain the situation, and ask about siphoning some gas.

“How you gonna do that?” the man asks.

“Well,” I say, “If one of your men would drive their truck up next to my Prius….”

“You ran outa gas with a Prius?” he butts in, astonished. “Well, if that don’t beat all. Hey, Mary, you hear that? He ran outa gas with a Prius.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Mary said. But she can’t hide her laughter.

‘You got 600 miles of range and you run out of gas?” the man asks, laughing. “How in the world do you do that?”

“I didn’t think I would,” I say. “My trip odometer read 450 miles at Casa Grande and I was sure I could make it to Gila Bend.”

“You doin’ 80 on the Interstate?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And runnin’ your air conditioner?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that explains it,” he says. “Those advertised mileage numbers are only good around town at low speed. Kinda surprised you made it this far.”

“You’re right, of course,” I said. “I can see that now. So, how about siphoning some gas?”

The man stands up. He’s got at least 6 inches and 75 pounds on me and every ounce of the 75 pounds is muscle. “We ain’t gonna do no siphoning,” he says. “No, sir, we ain’t gonna do none of that. Out here gas is scarce. Closest gas is 30 miles away in Dateland. We ain’t gonna do no siphoning.”

“I’ll pay you whatever you ask,” I plead.

“Nope,” he says. “Out here, we always keep a little extra gas on hand. And if somebody needs some, we give it away. Never know when you might need a little help yourself. C’mon.”

He leads me out of the RV and over to his truck. Under a tarp in the back of his truck are two full 3 gallon gas cans. He pulls one out, walks over to my Prius, and empties the contents into my gas tank.

“That’ll do you until you get to Dateland,” he says.

I reach for my wallet.

He puts his hands out, palms facing me. “Now don’t you go insultin’ me,” he says. “Like I said, we give it away.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

“In the future, whenever your gas gauge says half empty, fill it up. You just never know,” he says.

As I walk away to my car, I can’t help remembering the number of times Karen has told me the same thing.

When I get back in the car and look at Karen, her position hasn’t changed an inch. Still stone faced, sullen, looking straight ahead. I know she’s going to let me have it. It’s only a question of when.

She stays that way for the 30 miles to Dateland.

I stop at the first gas station I see and fill it up. When I get back into the car, she still hasn’t moved an inch.

“All right,” I say, “Out with it. Get it out of your system. We can’t go all the way to San Diego like this.”

She starts to laugh. But it’s not a hysterical laugh, or an angry laugh. It’s a kind of a quiet giggle.

“You’re not angry?” I ask, astonished.

“Oh, I was for the first 30 minutes or so,” she says, softly. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry as I was then. But I realized that it was just you being you. And my getting angry wasn’t going to make matters any better.”

She turned to me. “But,” she said with a wicked grin, “I’ve got the greatest story to tell everybody I know back home. Especially the members of my church choir. I’m going to tell them how you ran out of gas with a Prius. You’ll never live this one down, buster. You’ll never live this one down.”

Fred can’t contain his laughter. “You ran out of gas with a Prius?” he exclaims. “Karen’s right. You’ll never live that down.”