The Last Gallon of Gas
May 10, 2009
Below is something totally new for Discovery Earth. It's a half-told tale, written in honor of your special feature Fossil Fuels: Is the Party Over? I wrote the first half and you can write the second half in the comments section (the link is at the bottom of this post). The best endings submitted by May 24 will be moved to the main page of this blog, as well as featured on the Discovery Earth website. So get to writing! Let's see what Pablo Ganley does with the world's last gallon of gasoline.
The Last Gallon of Gas on Earth
“That's $855,000 going once. Going twice. Sold! For $855,000 to the bearded man in the front row, the last known gallon of gasoline on the Earth.”
“And the most expensive gallon of gasoline ever,” thought the bearded man. Pablo Ganley felt exhausted after the seven ferocious minutes of bidding. He was an accountant, not a collector. But he won it. It cost him his life savings, but he was now the owner of the final few drops of the magic liquid that once moved humanity in so many ways.
On the ride home Ganley sat alone in a private room on the train with the small gas can on the seat beside him. Secure in its bright red, refurbished metal container, this last gasoline was 91-octane Chevron Supreme with Techron, refined from genuine Saudi crude, vintage 2024. The lab tests confirmed it. There was even a certificate of authenticity.
Ganley had kept the domed can covered with a black cotton cloth so that people would mistake it for a small bird cage. Otherwise who knows how much harassment he might get. It angered him to even think about it. People do not understand, he thought. This train of thought reminded him again of the mistake he'd made a few weeks earlier, right after seeing the advertisement about the auction.
In his excitement, he had let it slip to his colleague Kim that he was interested in attending and bidding on the gasoline. Then he added, unwisely, that he was working on rebuilding a 1968 pick-up truck. In reply he got an uncomfortable silence and a puzzled, almost offended, look from Kim. A moment later she smiled.
“Good one Pablo,” Kim said. “You totally caught me off guard. You're so totally not a jokester most of the time. So the next thing you're going to tell me is that you're reviving slavery and cigarette smoking, right?”
He could only fake a smile and change the subject. But he'd seethed about it ever since. To think that Kim and others really looked back on the Age of Oil the same way they looked back on American slavery and smoking! There was no comparison. Slavery was obviously evil, he thought. Cigarettes cause cancer. No one had ever honored the cultures that spawned such things.
Oil, on the other hand, was not evil, no matter the lies they teach in school these days about climate change, terrorism and all the supposedly toxic side-effects of petrochemicals. No way. Oil pulled America out of the mud and made it the most muscular, powerful nation on Earth. Those were the days!
According to Ganley's read on history, it was because the U.S.A. adopted all that anti-fossil fuel propaganda that the nation had declined. Now it was just another washed up superpower has-been, just like not-so-merry-old England. Today the only superpower was Bolivia – the lithium capital of the world. Lithium for batteries. Bolivia! In South America! How his father would have laughed at the very suggestion of it!
Ganley suddenly felt the need to commune with his gasoline. He lifted the gas can onto his lap, unscrewed the brass cap and gently sniffed. Then quickly twisted it shut again. Ah! The odor cleared his head and made him salivate. Pungent and meaty, it triggered a deluge of memories.
First was the memory of being lifted by his father into the seat of an ancient blue GMC pickup truck. The truck smelled of gasoline, aged upholstery, axle grease, tobacco smoke and motor oil. The family's name for the truck was “Stinky” because of its perennial stew of mostly toxic stenches. But Pablo loved all the scents. It was the smell of Papa. It filled him with longing for the low, idling rumble of his father's voice and the sight of his dark and weathered living face. His father died when Pablo was only eight. He was an old man.
In Pablo's memory the truck and his father were almost the same person. And the truck, Pablo knew, was truly was a major part of his father's identity. Without it he would just be another indistinguishable old man heading to work on the train. The truck made the man. It was once that way for every American.
“Everyone had cars and the cars were part of their personalities,” he mused. “You could just gas up and go wherever you wanted to in a car that suited you to 'T.' Those were the days.”
Ganley remained lost in memories for the remaining two hours of his trip home. From the station he walked the last kilometer to his little house. He set the gas can on the kitchen counter, reheated some day-old leek soup (whatever happened to a steak and potatoes?, he wondered) then sat down to eat and finally face the big question: What was he going to with history's last gallon of gasoline?
He couldn't burn it: Not in an engine or even on a funeral pyre. That had been against the law for decades. And as much as he was against many things happening in society these days, he had a deep-seated revulsion for law-breaking.
He did not want to keep it as a collectible investment, like the other bidders at the auction. Those people would have treated the last gallon of gas as they did those very old bottles of wine that were bought and sold and never opened. Nevertheless, Ganley was determined to do something with the last gallon of gas. It had to be glorious. It had to do honor to the wonderful world that was lost and to his father. But what?
He finished his soup, placed the bowl and spoon in the sink and moved the gas can onto the kitchen table. He reversed a chair so he could watch the can while leaning his chin and hands on the chair back. Then he sat down and started thinking...
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