Today, we buy gas at a convenience store gas station and pump the gas ourselves. There was a time, many years ago, when we purchased the fuel for our automobiles at a full-service gas station.
One would pull into the drive, running over a hose that rang a bell inside the station to notify the employees that a customer needed service. An attendant, usually in some sort of uniform, would query. “Fill ‘er up?” He would then clean your windshield and open the hood to check all the fluids in the car. I can remember driving my old jalopies into the station for gas and having the attendant tell me I was a quart low of oil or that I needed more coolant. I thanked him for checking, but my clunkers were always low on some fluid.
Gas stations were more than “filling stations,” they were automotive service centers. Mechanics at these establishments performed brake jobs, tune-ups, changed fluids, even provided major automotive repair. You could buy tires, batteries, windshield wipers, as well as candy, sandwiches and soda pop, while you were buying gas or having service done.
Gas stations used to have free maps. You could get a road map for every State in the Union for absolutely nothing. My friends and I would ride our bikes to make the rounds of all the stations so we could collect a map from all 50 states.
The gas station was also the place to air up the tires on our bikes and perhaps get a soda pop or candy bar, so we felt like we were real “customers.”
As with grocery stores, it seemed there was a gas station on every corner. There was a Texaco station at the SE corner of Main and McKinley, about a block and half from my house. There were two stations at the corner of Main and Taft. Dewey had several gas stations. There were also quite a few stations on Mission Street.
One of the stations on Dewey that stands out in my memory was a Skelly station owned by Denver Grigsby. Denver had played baseball for three years as an outfielder for the Chicago Cubs. There was a mechanic who worked for Denver Grigsby who was quite a character. Charlie Drake worked for Denver when I was in high school and college. Charlie had a quaint saying when I would ask him how much service was going to be. He would jokingly respond with, “Now, don’t treat me like a stepchild.” He was a great automotive technician and he made me laugh.
Charlie Drake later had his own Texaco station at the NE corner of Elm and Dewey. In the mid-seventies, he serviced my van. He even took the transmission out of my El Camino and had it rebuilt, which cost me a whopping $66.50.
There was another Skelly station, owned by “Junior” Guinn, who was my father’s friend and one of his customers. One cold November day, I pulled into Junior’s station to ask him what he thought was wrong with my 1957 Pontiac. On the way home from high school, steam started rising from the floorboard of the car, fogging up all the windows.
Junior pulled my car into one of the service bays.
“Ya got a leak in your heater core,” he bellowed.
Apparently, the heater core was under the front seat of the Pontiac. He did not have the part, so he bypassed the heater so I could drive the car. When I asked him what I was going to do for heat, he replied, “Get ya a hot woman!” Needless to say, instead, I went to the salvage, purchased and installed a used heater core myself.
Another station that did some work on my cars was a Freeway station, just north of the old school administration building. I had a 1963 Chevy in my senior year, which had an oil leak I could not fix. The station owner fixed it, parts and all for $20.00. I was impressed.
The gas wars began in 1966. I can remember the price dropping from 27.9 cents to 15.9 cents in a few days. I remember filling up my 1954 Plymouth for under $2.50. Granted, that was only a 12-cent drop in price, but that was nearly a 60 percent drop.
Historically, gas prices stayed in the 25 to 30 cents price range for over twenty years. I can remember filling up my new Chevy Vega in 1972 for 25.9 cents per gallon. In 1973, the US suffered through an oil embargo. There were gas lines and rising prices from that day forward. The reason for the volatility of gas prices today (prices seem to change daily), is the fact that oil and gasoline are traded as commodities in the futures market and fluctuate almost daily.
Today, to fill up my work van costs about $50.00!
Ah, for the good old days.
