The Scout Motto is “Be Prepared.” I was a scout, so I learned as a young teenager to think ahead and prepared for any situation. It did not matter if it was for an upcoming camping trip, scout meeting, school tests, potential rain or snow fall, driving on less that a full tank of gas, or fixing dinner for my siblings; I always tried to have everything I might need to successfully complete the activity.
One rather dramatic failure to look ahead was when Deborah and I bought a new Toyota Land Cruiser to prepare for a job within the Sheriff’s Department which I did not get. I obtained two used “jerry cans” each of which held 5-gallons of gasoline and bolted their “holders” to the side of the vehicle. When it was time to use the gas while on a trip to Sacramento, I poured the gas into the main gas tank and soon thereafter the engine began to miss and eventually would not run at all.
Fortunately, we were near our destination in Sacramento and our friends came and towed us to their home. One of their friends diagnosed our problem to be a clogged fuel filter. I had not anticipated that the “jerry cans” were older and had rusted inside. Eventually little particles of rust in the gas had clogged the fuel filter. After installing a new fuel filter and cleaning out the “jerry cans” and refilling them with gas, we were able to finish our trip without any further trouble.
© 16 August 2015
About the Author
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.
My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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