Remember? Actually I had the good fortune to work at a Mobil service station from the fall of '73 (just before the first oil embargo) through '81. A very good experience, taught me many lessons, made a lot of good friends. In retrospect, good times.
Ding-ding "One up! that was the call. A long time ago I cleaned acres of glass and pumped tank-trucks of gas. Since I mostly had evenings and weekend shifts, I often ended up handling the odd stuff that rolled in. Minor stuff you'd repair and get the customer on their way, major stuff had to wait for the mechanics. Mostly learn by doing. Often had to open or close the station. A lot of responsibility for a young fellow. I didn't realize it at the time, but the experience gave me a lot of self-confidence.
"Watch out for the amateur drunks." One evening shortly before Christmas, a VW bug lurched onto the lot... missing it's fenders??? The driver stumbles out of the car, I think it was to buy a pack of cigarettes. While he's inside, I notice the keys are still in the ignition, thinking "this guy's in no shape to be on the road", on the sly I pull the keys and pocket them. He stumbles back outside and proceeds to get in the bug. He can't find the keys. He checks all of his pockets, once. He checks all his pockets again, they're still not there. He starts opening the doors to the bug and rooting around the car. At some point a frozen turkey plops out of the car and starts rolling across the lot. It was both funny and pathetic.
The guy finally gets the frozen turkey back in the car, stumbles over to me to explain he can't find his keys (yeah, I think, they're in my pocket). He goes on to say he usually doesn't drink (yeah, I think, that's obvious). After rooting around for his keys a little longer, I suggest he call someone to take him home. He gets on the pay phone (remember those?) and after considerable fumbling he finally reaches his wife.
Some time later, his wife arrives. Boy, is she upset... We push the VW to the side lot. The guy goes home with his steaming mad wife.
I heard that the next day the police arrived with a matching, but crumpled, Volkswagen fender. They found it at the bank just up the road where a fence had been knocked down. I guess it matched the VW bug on our lot. I think the other fender was found out by a highway guard rail.
That was one of the more interesting evenings, but we had others, too.
I'm often sorry the corner service stations are no longer with us. I think that in their time, they gave a lot of young guys a solid entry into the working world and good real-life experience.