The Plan

A lot of years ago (when I was young and foolish — as opposed to now, when I’m old and foolish) rental cars were a kind of novelty. You couldn’t necessarily rent a car at every airport, and the cars that they did rent weren’t necessarily new — they may have been several years old. 
So renting cars back then wasn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t something you just did at the drop of a hat. 

Shortly before or after (memory detail problem here) graduating from high school, three or four of us decided to take a trip. The original destination was Las Vegas, but I think we wound up down around El Paso and Juarez. Anyhow, we went to Oklahoma City and rented a car for our trip. 

In those days, there was a rental charge for the car (by the day, I think,) plus a charge for every mile driven. I don’t remember being required to return the car with a full tank of gas.

Anyhow, over a few days, we put a lot of miles of the car. When we were heading back home, it suddenly occurred to us that there was no way we had enough money to pay for what the rental bill was going to be. So — we hatched the perfect plan.

One of my friends’ parents were farmers — they had a pretty big farm with lots of farm equipment, and they had a big fuel tank to store gas that they used in their tractors, hay-bailers, etc. The gas that they used in the farm equipment was not the same as gas used in cars… it was a lower octane, no additives and it was sold only for use in “off-road” or farm equipment. It was also exempt from the road and gas taxes applied to regular gas. 

The other thing that was important to our plan, was that cars odometers were mechanical (as opposed to electronic, like most are today) and if the car was put in reverse gear, the odometer would turn backwards. 

Here’s how the plan all came together: the night before we drove to Oklahoma City to return the car, we took it to my friend’s farm, filled it with “tractor gas,” jacked up the rear wheels, put it in reverse, and let it run all night. 

The people at the rental company must have wondered what we did with the car for so long — we had backed the odometer up so much that by the time we got to the rental office, it showed we had only driven less than a hundred miles. 

I probably shouldn’t be confessing this now, but I figure the statute of limitations has run out. And they say confession is good for the soul. And — I’m glad we did it when we did, I’d have no idea how to pull something like this off now with all the high-tech in the cars…..
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