Floating stick....
Many, and I mean many, moons ago I flew a bi plane with the fuel tank right behind the firewall and then an open cockpit. Always did visually confirm the fuel state with a yard stick. Then when flying would watch the float stick slowly get shorter. About once each hour I would take the same yard stick and push the floating stick down and watch it bob back up. As I recall, when the floating stick was all the way down, there was less than five usable liters remaining.
Now this C-140 and for that matter the 150's only needed about 240 meters or about 800 feet to take off. So maybe at 50 feet over the runway he had used maybe 300 meters/1000 feet. I suspect the takeoff start point left a good number of meters/feet behind the tail. Either that or a very small, short runway.
Now the lift off speed would be about 55 MPH, and a 50 feet the engine sputter, wing rock and relights. If the engine did stop instead of sputtering, was the starter reengaged? As I recall the airspeed for an unassisted start was something about 90 MPH.
One very lucky dude. Just lost a couple of his nine lives or maybe just some bar talk over a large cool one.