The rest of the story

This is the continuation of "A long night at the Opera".

The next morning we got up, had a leisurely breakfast, checked out, loaded the car and started our drive back to the villa (house). I decided that we would drive the longer but quicker way back, via the pay toll road better known as the “Autostrada” past the outskirts of Milano, north to Como and then along the northwest shore to Mezzegra. But first, to be completely efficient, I decided that we would fill the tank of our diesel rental with fuel before the Autostrada. I pulled into a station close to the hotel, got out and started filling. I remarked to Joan how cheap the fuel was when she screamed out, "GENE, YOU’RE FILLING THE TANK WITH UNLEADED!" I stopped the filling immediately after putting in 22 liters of unleaded and, of course, quickly started to come up with a reason why this was not my fault. It became abundantly clear that the fault lie with Tony the engineer over at the AGIP oil company who designed the pump layout. There are four fillers side by side and I picked up the filler to the left of the “diesel” sign instead of the right. I knew it wasn’t my fault. I ran into the office screaming,” what am I going to do, what am I going to do?” Of course no one spoke English. At that point I threw myself on the floor kicking and screaming and causing a major scene. Apparently this was close to the universal language between men as a local mechanic was having coffee in the restaurant and saw the total commotion and figured out what was going on. He came over and indicated that I should give him the keys. I jumped up, brushed myself off, we all piled into the car and he drove a couple of blocks over to his repair shop. He had one of his young assistants siphon the entire tank, add an additive and sent us on our way after extracting 50 Euro for his trouble. He asked me to never grovel and hug his leg again when I thanked him. We quickly came upon another station (not a defective AGIP one) and while Joan, Francesca and Kathie hovered over my shoulder we watched the station attendant fill the tank with diesel. Oh, by the way, at a mere $9.50 a gallon you can imagine my feelings as I saw all that contaminated fuel go to waste. We made it home without incident and my letter to AGIP outlining their deficiencies will go out as soon as I find a translator. The first nine people I asked refused after reading my letter. I’m a bit confused.

Ciao,

Gino