July 1967
The first time I remember running out of gas was on the Verazanno Narrows bridge that goes from New York City to Staten Island. I had driven my Volkswagon Beetle from Harrisburg to visit my friend Dennis. The car sputtered and rolled to a stop somewhere near the midspan of the bridge. After about five minutes a city service truck appeared with a can of gas. He charged me a couple bucks and we both drove off. It seemed that running out of gas was no big deal.
Summer 1975
I rode my Honda 360 from Summit to Albany every day to attend class. It was 110 miles round trip. My motorcycle could go 108 miles on a full tank of gas. Even if I had a full tank when I started for Albany, I would still have to get gas in Albany to make it back to Cobleskill.
I think I ran out of gas about once a week that summer. I would forget to stop at the last gas station in Albany, realize 10 miles down the road that I had forgotten, and press on thinking “This time I can make it.” Each time I would end up pushing my motorcycle up the last hill before coasting down into the gas station on the east end of town in Cobleskill.
April 1980
Kathleen got her first driving lesson when she was four years old. I was driving home with her in our Ford Pinto and ran out of gas about five blocks from home. I had her get behind the wheel and steer the car while I pushed. She was a very bad driver.
July 1983
We moved the family from Kirkland, WA to Wellsboro, PA so I could take a job teaching Computer Science at Mansfield University. We packed all our possessions into the box of a 24 foot U-Haul truck, hitched our 1981 Datsun to the back, threw cats in the Datsun, crammed two kids, one barfing dog, one wife and me into the cab and headed east on I-90.
It took four days driving at 55 mph for 15 hours a day to reach Wellsboro. The truck didn’t have a radio or an air conditioner. We could roll the windows down for cool air and to drown out the sound of kids crying or the dog barfing. Martha and I took turns driving. When it was her turn to drive, I would sleep in the Datsun. (I’m pretty sure that was illegal.) Most of our meals were fast food, eaten in the truck while on the road. At night we pulled over at a truck stop, threw our sleeping bags on the ground and slept soundly.
Passing through Chicago on the freeway, I got confused and took the wrong road – the one that was for cars only. Cars behind us were honking their horns. Then we ran out of gas. More cars honked their horns. A nice man with a wife and two kids stopped, picked me up, drove me to a gas station so I could get gas, then got back on the freeway and drove me back to the truck where Martha, Kathleen and Mike and the cats and barfing dog were waiting.
May 2000
I was telling Anne Marie the story about Martha walking around our house at 5:30 in the morning, naked except for a charcoal grill cover wrapped around her. Our bikes were on the roof rack of my Volvo and we were going to Monroe to ride when we ran out of gas. I got my bike off the roof rack, got a gas can out of the back of the car and rode a couple miles down the road, filled the can and returned with five gallons of gas. Anne Marie was laughing. She thought it was remarkable how my “Martha story” turned into another “Karl story.”
