Desperate Times

I had a request for this story - it's not really very humorous, but it is a warning.

To take you back, we own a 1982 F150 pickup as a second vehicle. Because Slade's office literally sits in our driveway at night, we don't have a need for a nice, shiny new set of wheels to sit beside the van. The rusted out blue pickup does just fine - and I love that I can fill the box of it to the brim and take it to the dump at the ranch.

Now, we've always always always just put enough fuel in each time we are going somewhere because the pickup sits so much - we just don't want a full tank sitting. Weird. I don't know. But a few weeks ago, I was feeling particularly flush in the money department and I knew we'd be making a few long trips in the pickup, so I fueled it to the brim. Both tanks. $110 worth of fuel. All before the prices jumped $.30 a gallon later that day. My mission was accomplished. Slade couldn't believe it. I was proud for having some foresight.

We haven't probably ever filled the rear tank since owning this pickup, so when I switched the gauge over, I was not really surprised to find it broken. I mentioned it to the guy who owns the service station, and his advice was to write down the mileage and just drive it until we thought it would be about out. Made sense to me.

We loaded up a few days later and huckly-bucked (that's what Slade calls it) into Rapid City to buy a bunch of supplies for a remodel. We figured by the time we arrived back home that we probably still had 1/4 tank left on the rear.

So, to take inventory - we had roughly 1/4 tank in the rear, and a full tank in front.

Fast forward a few days when the neighbor and I decided to take all of our kids to the ranch. The idea was I'd drive the old pickup down carrying the bikes, etc and she'd follow me with her van. I jumped in, fired up the engine and it began to lurch immediately. "Great, ok, well, so maybe we didn't have 1/4 tank of fuel." Switched it over to the front. The gauge starts jumping around and then promptly settles on E.

I instantly assumed that because I'd been jockying that gauge back and forth between the two tanks that I had now broken the gauge on both tanks, not just the back. We headed the 60 miles to the ranch on the assumption that my front tank was full, but the gauge was just broken. Just before Kadoka, I started to get paranoid. Kadoka was my last shot at fuel before the ranch - and that's a long 45-minute stretch of reservation land to try to cover.

I pulled off in Kadoka and decided I'd put $10 in the tank and if it filled it then I would KNOW it was the gauge. I started the nozzle just about the time an old geezer from Michigan popped around the corner of the pump and started telling me his life history. Before I knew it, I had put another $60 worth of fuel in that dadgum tank.

So, now I'm pissed because I know we've become victims of fuel theft. Right in our driveway parked next to a highway patrol car, right down the street from the Chief of Police and right across the street from the Sheriff. We live on cop row - and SOME idiot is brave enough to siphon an entire tank of fuel right under all of our noses.

I called Slade immediately and asked him if he had taken any midnight rendezvous that I didn't know about. Nope, he hadn't moved it. I didn't figure so - firing up the engine on that pickup would wake a dead person - and I hadn't heard anything. Then I asked if, hypothetically, an entire tank of fuel leaked out on the ground, would we know it.

He often accuses me of asking stupid questions and this time was no different. "My God, Brit....what do you think? If you didn't see 20 gallons of fuel running down the gutter, don't you think you'd at least smell it?" Yeah, okay, well that's what I thought - but I wanted to confirm it before I started headhunting the stupid little ass that robbed me.

I reported it all to the police, but that's beside the point. What's done is done - but it just goes to show that desperate times call for desperate measures. $4.00/gallon plus is hurting people - and to have it robbed hurts even worse. Watch your things carefully...vehicles, purses, wallets - if we weren't already a Dog Eat Dog world, we're about to be.