Out of Gas with a 1/2 Acre Remaining

I have to admit I'm fairly new to the art of lawn mowing. From a visual standpoint, my novice is as plain as day - the lawn edges aren't cut, there are patches completely missed, and my lines are all over the place. There are spots that look like crop circles. But regardless of the lack of visual appeal, the lawn is mowed enough to avoid neighborhood complaints and after a day or so, looks pretty nice.

Riding lawn mowers aren't designed as a walk-up-and-use system. Twice I've needed help turning on my mower - and I've only actually mowed the lawn twice, so that's a 100% failure rate. If I had an instruction manual, I might consider leafing through it, but as my mower is secondhand, I've got nothing to refer to except a diatribe printed by my feet.

Note: there are eight mower starting steps, however, I've been able to get going with three:

1. Depress clutch
2. Turn key (it's not a real key, just a plastic thing sticking out of the panel)
3. Move a metal stick forward to accelerate

If I want to actually mow and not just drive around, I have to remember to adjust another metal stick. Fortunately, I've had a fairly good success rate on this task, only forgetting once. I mowed for about five minutes, looked back, and realized I hadn't actually cut the grass. Embarrassing. However, I wouldn't say this is a major problem as it's recoverable and the lack of a loud mowing sound should be fairly obvious on most occasions.

My second time mowing, Craig checked the gas level (lifting the hood and physically looking at the tank) and said I should be good. And I was good, for a while. About halfway through mowing, with no warning, the mower went "putt putt" and stopped. I was absolutely confused. Why did the mower shut off? Did I break it? Does it need to be serviced? I had no clue what was wrong. I stared at the mower looking for some clue and there was nothing. No warning lights, no indicators, nothing to tell me what was wrong.

I was out of gas.

I was also in the middle of the yard.

What this mower needs is a gas gauge. I imagine that's a bit more complex to build than a gas tank without a gauge, but I could have saved some worry and frustration sitting in the middle of an acre of lawn on a hot afternoon had I known I was getting low on gas.