Filler Up!

Many years ago, I was working in Kennebunk on the Maine turnpike at a Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the south bound side of the freeway. I was hired for the summer as the outside clean up guy, and one of my jobs was to run a machine run on gasoline that reminded me of a overgrown vacuum cleaner on steroids.

One day I was putting gas in it when I had this bright idea of taking a little gas and putting in into my zippo lighter as my lighter was also empty. So I filled it up with gas so that it overflowed a bit all over my lighter. I didn’t think much of it as I wiped it off with a rag in haste and proceeded to give it a try. Well the first few spins of the ignite did not produce any sparks because it was still soaked with gasoline.

But I still couldn't get my lighter to produce a flame. So I spun the flint wheel over and over again and finally it lit not only my lighter, but a good part of my right hand as well. The excess gasoline on the outside of the lighter ignited as well and I instinctively dropped the lighter as my hand was on fire. To my chagrin the now flaming lighter landed right on the metal gas container and started that on fire as well. Oh boy I gasped, I am in deep trouble now!

What do I do now? The first thing was I put my flaming hand into the crushed ice machine to extinguish the fire, then I turned my attention to the gas can that was on fire on the outside of the can. In the meantime, I was anticipating the rest of the gas in the can to explode, so all I could think of doing was to give the gas can a good boot away from me and the building that was just behind me.

So where do you think it ended up? Now the flames were burning under a fuel tank of a Boston Globe truck that was parked nearby as the driver was inside making a delivery. Now I was in a high anxiety panic for sure and if I don’t die first when this truck’s gas tank explodes, someone else might as well. Or worse yet, someone saw the whole thing and had already called the police and they were on there way to pick me up. One thing for sure I was really in a pickle! My life is over I thought! Bummer.

So what happened? The gas can extinguished itself before the rest of the gas caught on fire and the truck never blew up or caught on fire. No one saw this whole disaster and I lived to see another day, although I got 2ND degree burns on my hand. The moral of this story is not to ever play with gasoline. It is very dangerous! Who knows what might have happened if things had worked out differently.