This morning, one of our houseguests got up at 5:00 a.m. and went on a quest for gas.
He’d heard rumors that a supply truck would make an early morning visit to the BP on County Line Road, so he drove there first. The rumor proved untrue; the BP was obviously closed and deserted.
He took the Interstate further north, thinking that the big stations along I-55 might be refueled more often. At the first exit, he spotted and joined a long line of cars at the Pilot station. When he saw that the people at the pumps weren’t actually pumping gas, he walked into the store and checked with the counter attendant, who said, "We’re out of gas. We don’t have any idea when we’ll get gas. These people are here just in case we do."
He kept going north.
He found a second station, also surrounded by a long line. By the time he joined the line, the police arrived and began ordering the crowd to disperse. "This store has no gas, and this road is just a two-lane road to begin with," the officer explained. "We understand that you’re eager to fill up, but we can’t let you people wait here and block the road."
He kept going north.
Finally, he spotted an open station. After taking the exit, he joined a line of more than 100 cars. He estimates the line moved at about one car per minute. "At least it was moving. So I stayed."
Along the way, he spoke with one of several police officers supervising the line. "I’m not really a police officer," the man confided. "I’m just an alderman in a uniform. The Chief of Police and his officers were here for twenty-four hours yesterday. We came in this morning and forced them to go home and get some sleep."
Just over ninety minutes later — about three hours after leaving our house — our guest gassed up his car. "I had to get premium," he told me. "It was all they had left, and the alderman told me he had no idea when they’d get another shipment."
With other people waiting five and six hours for gas that never materializes, my friend feels pretty lucky today.
Add comment