Florida - It's A Real Gas
by M. Litt

I was dying to drive up to New York. Long Island, where my Dad is (hopefully) finally selling the ancestral home.

I wasn't dying to be in New York, I just wanted to get out of Florida and take a nice long drive. But I worried that I couldn't afford both the gas, the tolls and the motels.

I was really too chicken to sleep out in my non-air conditioned, convertible Volkswagen. But it was when I fell asleep in my lovely little (parked) car that this adventure really started.

I was sort of practicing for this drive, heading across Florida one night, right through The Everglades, on a road called 'Alligator Alley'. I started out late at night, being a night person, and quite early the next morning, I met up with some very nice guys from outer space. I think.

Can't say I really met them but, I surely did encounter a non-human race in the Swamps of Florida. And they were quite advanced, at least compared to us, because it was they that allowed me my lovely, long drive up to Long Island, NY.

I believe that they could even power up some temporary world peace and pretty much save the environment. Guess they just don't feel like it.

One night, summertime in south Florida, I started my drive across Florida at about 12:30am from Dania, near Ft. Lauderdale and the Atlantic Ocean.

Heading for Naples, on the Gulf of Mexico it hard to believe how dry a swamp can get in between. Hoping to avoid lots of traffic; it is the only road across for miles, I never had a hope answered, kick me in the pants so hard.

No traffic, barely any lights, not even a friendly alligator did I pass! And I was wind whipped and thirsty. Some big time car traveler!

I scanned the passing nothingness for some lights, life, a diet coke with lemon... nothing. I kept on. I'd been so protected, lived such a safe, boring little life and I was determined to get myself someplace new.

New didn't look like This in my head. Just dusty, dry dirt on both sides. And then, up ahead in the distance...(cliche, but just how it happened.)...LIGHTS!

As I got closer, I was getting happier. There were lots of lights in a big square configuration. Yes, it was the middle of the night, but maybe a McDonalds stayed open for all night truckers or something.

Well, squares of lights begat more squares. Lights outlined giant squares in a lines, after many lines of lights in a square shape. A few grey concrete building were here and there.

The giant squares of lights were lines and lines of giant trucks. Outlined in lights. I drove around them and down the alleys they made, but not a person at all appeared anywhere.

All these trucks. I gave up looking for refreshment after awhile and just parked my little convertible Cabriolet somewhere to rest. I must've fallen straight to sleep.

The sky was showing signs of light when I left, still didn't see anyone.

~ ~ ~
Back home, I noticed an old plastic bottle on the carpet in the back seat of the car, bright green. A worn label said 'Gasforver'� or something hard to read. And I remembered I'd had a new bottle of 'Supercharged' Gas Additive right there that was gone! Someone must've switched it when I was sleeping at the truck universe.

Well, I soon started my trip from South Florida to New York City and though monotonous at times, I was excited! Worried though; always worried about money.

Damned if I hadn't gone a thousand miles before I realized I hadn't needed to stop for gas. And I never did.

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