I don’t believe this one. About 10:30 I decided to get some refreshment to bring back here to enjoy, and after leaving the 7/11 run out of gas at the bottom of a hill at Main St. Just enough of in incline to drift across to the parking lot of a bank. Don’t have my phone but that is why I bought a Trac Fone some months ago to keep in the car for emergencies. The phone isn’t working. What the fuck am I going to do? Well, eventually a cop car will drive by and they can help. This happens not two minutes later and I am saved. But I am not saved. They call their dispatcher who calls a towing company but at 10:30 at night they don’t answer, and they tell me that even if they do they probably won’t come without AAA authorization. They say there is a gas station 2 blocks away and the pumps are open and do I have a gas can? I do not. By policy they are not allowed to push my car. What the fuck am I going to do? It’s 20 degress out and I only have a light jacket, no hat and no gloves. Think I am going to have to hitchhike to Walmart and get a gas can and hitchhike back. Like I am going to get a ride there and back at night in this small town. Then I remember there is still a box of kitchen stuff in my trunk that I never bothered to unpack. Maybe there is something in there I can use. There is, a big red pitcher. I am saved. Walk up to the gas station, get gas and come back. I am not yet saved. The pitcher is too big and bulky to tip at more than 45 degrees to the ground and can only get about a third of the gas in, I try to basically throw the pitcher toward the tank and slosh some more in. Not enough to get it started. I look in the trunk and find a measuring cup. Pour the rest of the gas in there and then into the tank. Still not enough. Back to the gas station, fill up the pitcher and pour into the measuring cup and into the tank, twice. Thank god it started or I would still be out on the road and my thumb, which by then I would have pulled out of my ass, would be in the air.
Paragraphs, use them. Please.
Portland, OR. It doesn’t really snow much here, but every few years we get a storm that dumps several inches. When this happens, the city quickly descends into chaos, because most people around here don’t know how to drive in snow.
Six or seven years ago, such a storm struck while I was at work. The campus was closed and everyone was told to go home. And, every business and other school in the area did the same thing. The traffic quickly became a clusterfuck. After three hours, inching along the roads, I’d gone about a mile and a half. I’d left the campus with 3/8 of a tank, and after those three hours the low fuel light was blinking.
I turned into the next parking lot I came across, and abandoned my car. It was in the 20s. I was dressed like I would for a normal day at that time of year - jeans and a sweatshirt (no hood), no gloves. I was five miles from home. I started walking. My wife kept saying she wanted to come get me, but I kept repeating Absolutely Not. Then she’d be stuck out in this traffic too, and it’s not like she’d be able to get to me anyway.
It took me another three hours to get home. The traffic was horrendous most of the way there… until I got to the hill, with the stop light at the bottom. Most cars were spinning their wheels trying to get up the hill. Once I got a ways up, it was deadly quiet, no cars in sight. It’s funny, driving over that hill every day, I almost didn’t even think about it being there. Until that day.
When I got home, my clothes were wet, but I don’t recall being very cold. I guess the exertion of walking through snow as quickly as I could kept me warm. The first thing I did, though, was take a long, hot shower. 
Commenting on my style of writing, if you don’t like it, please don’t. I know what paragraphs are. This was pasted from messenger on Facebook. I thought about adding paragraph breaks but decided to go with a more stream of consciousness style to convey all the thoughts I was having rapidly in those 45 mintues
There are very few pure gas stations anymore; most are combination gas station/convenience stores. And if it was a combination there would have been something in the store which you could empty out and carry gas in.
But no I can’t imagine such a situation happening to me: If it is 20 degrees out I always wear a coat and have gloves and warm hat. I have AAA if I have a problem. I’ve never run out of gas since about 20 years ago when my gas gauge didn’t work (and estimated gas usage based on miles driven since the last fillup). There’s a little light which comes on when you are getting too low–and that hasn’t come on for 10 years or so.
Like a gas can.
The store was closed, but the pumps were open. I get the warning and I had noticed it five minutes before running out. But I was nowhere near a gas station then. The needle was right on empty, that has always meant I have a gallon left. And it usually takes a few minutes for the gauge to be accurate, so when I noticed it I was hoping that was true. I rememered the night before while driving telling myself that I needed to get gas first thing the next day, but what can I say, a senior moment.
I ran my '71 e10 out of gas a week or two ago. Gotta love a car you can push a mile home. I did have a hat, but had to remove it. Got kinda toasty.
I ran a '73 Volvo out at almost the exact same spot and pushed it home, too, about 2 years ago.
Old fuel guage senders aren’t too accurate.
Everyone here ought to read The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship by Garbiel Garcia Marquez, if you haven’t already. 12-page short story in stream-of-consciousness mode, and the entire 12 pages is one long run-on sentence!
(Not sure if the full text is on-line anywhere. A quick search didn’t turn up anything obvious.)
I will try that. Funny you bring it up, I just recentley read about half of Love in the Time of Cholera. I got bored with it, didn’t like the characters much and didn’t finish it. Loved the first chapter. And re SoC writing, don’t generally like that.
Kerorauc, I read a comment recently that reading him at 40 was a lot different than reading him at 20. Well I never read him at 20, that would be 1982. Don’t know if the different reading experience is because of the writing style or the subject matter.
My brother is a big Faulkner fan, you might say he is obsessed with Absalom, Absalom! My other brother says, “Don’t get him started on it.” I’ve read the first pages on Amazon, and I want to like it, and I do for the first few paragraphs, but for 300 pages, I don’t know
Now I’m not sure if it was really 12 pages or maybe just 5 pages (it’s been a few years), but the whole story is told in one sentence.
No, you are NOT saved!!!
Where I live, it is illegal to sell gas to someone with a big red pitcher from his kitchen.They won’t let you insert the hose from the pump into anything except a legally certified gasoline container with a vapor-proof cap.
So you are a criminal.
Please go immediately to the police and turn yourself in…
Answering the OPs question:
No. I’ve never run out of gas. No. I’ve never been caught out in 20 degree weather without sufficient clothing. No. I’ve never been caught out in snowy/icy weather without sufficient tire chains or appropriate tires/4WD. No. I’ve never been stranded by broken belts, split hoses. dead batteries, lost coolant nor oil/radiator leaks as I carry repair supplies for all the above. No. I’ve never been held up by wipers, bulbs, fluids, etc. as I carry backup supplies, along with food, water, extra jacks, extra fuel, power pack, and even primitive bathroom capabilities. In extreme weather, I will have electric blankets, portable stove, a generator, and can provide hot meals for everyone on board my truck for a few days.
I’m one of those people.
I have never run out of gas (knock on wood). I always keep it at least 1/2 tank in the summer and 3/4 in the winter.
I got it @Mike_Mabes, I write stuff that way sometimes. Had no problem with it at all. I can empathize with your plight also.
It was 1989, late October. I was visiting a friend who lived a couple of towns over. The days were warm enough, but the nights were a bit cool the fall of that year. I was riding a motorcycle. Evening came, and along with it fog, the kind of fog that is so thick you can’t see much past ten feet or so past the front of your vehicle. Soaked, in the early stages of hypothermia when I reached the first open convenience store, I’m lucky the graveyard shift clerk was nice, or I probably would have died cause I couldn’t work my fingers well enough to get my helmet and wet jacket and gloves off.
When I was young and poor, I often ran out of gas, often in bad circumstances. Now that I don’t have to live like that, I make sure I always have at least a 1/4 of a tank and appropriate clothes for the situation. The real stress of being poor is that there is zero room for error.
When I was young and poor and stupid I ran out of gas at the bottom of the Posey Tunnel between Oakland and Alameda island. It didn’t take long for traffic to back up all the way back into the city. All of them honking their horns. Fortunately that was when cars had bumpers the size of snow plows so the guy behind me moved up and pushed me out.
Yes, but compared to other dangers of being poor, that one’s fairly cheap to insure against: just invest in one extra emergency gallon of gasoline, leave it in your tank, and from there on, pretend that one gallon left = empty.
I’ve never run out of gas, but I have had breakdowns.
I keep a set of overalls in my trunk. Thick and warm, I got them back when I was doing tree work in the dead of winter. They can keep me pretty comfy well into single digits, and warm enough to be safe into the negatives.
If I have to take a walk or camp out in my car, I should be okay.
Make sure you carry a block of cheese in your car. And crackers. They both go well with the whine.
So am I.