Christmastime at the Gas Station

Mac was a Cadillac man. The service station was where real work was done, but his nightly drive home was always in comfort. Big comfort, that’s what a 1960s Caddy was all about. His was a Marlin blue ’66 Coupe DeVille, nineteen feet in length and as expected, silky, almost excessively smooth if such a thing were possible.

We glided along, my grandfather Mac and me, to the daily work he seldom spoke of. I was twelve and allowed to ride in the front seat on this occasion. Christmas break had begun for the children and I was spending the day at the station with Mac.

We parked around back, and he opened the roll-up garage doors and turned lights on. The place came to life, and it wasn’t long before the first customers entered into the pump area with thirsty gas hogs.

“Customer service my boy, keep ‘em happy and they’ll keep comin’ back,” Mac said. “The journey’s end for oil is right here, the last step from the depths of the Earth to the automobile gas tank.”

Ding-ding, ding-ding! The remote bell in the shop area told on the cars out front.

“You stay in here.” Mac hustled out from the brightly lit office to the pumps. He moved in a way that wasn’t really running, but not a fast walk either. Sort of a middle aged man with sore knees version of a double-time.

“Hi Mac… Fill ’er up with ethyl.” the old guy said from the driver’s window of a bile colored Swedish import.

I sat in the small well-windowed office, with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the two foot tall fake Christmas tree on the counter doing its best to cheer up the station’s normally dreary and depressing scene. The predawn darkness was giving way to a damp, grey December morning and I looked out at the pumps. I could hear Mac and the customer chit-chatting and laughing while Mac wiped and squeegeed the windshield.

“Is that your kid in the office?” the guy said.

“No, I picked him up hitch-hiking along the highway.”

Both men laughed.

The pump clicked off indicating the tank was full.

“That’ll be four-eighty total.”

“Four-eighty? That’s highway robbery,” the man said. “Here, keep the change,” he said handing Mac a five dollar bill.

“Gee, you’re a big spender, I’ll have to tell my sister about you,” Mac said.

The old man laughed, and Mac slapped the tail-light as the car wheeled back out onto Aurora Avenue traffic. More customers began to filter in from the typical heavy morning commute. That year, the oil company was having its stations give away Christmas themed drinking glasses in an effort to steal customers away from their rivals. Cases of them sat behind the counter near where I was seated. Mac ran into the office numerous times to grab glasses if the customer bought a fill-up of fuel. I watched him run out and hand them to a lady through the driver’s side window. “Thanks Ma’am, have a nice day.”

There were as many different types of motorists as there are types of people. Most were kind and polite, but occasionally a problem rolled in. They usually bought a little gas and wanted the world in return.

“Check the tires, check the oil and radiator level. Wash all the windows, NOT JUST THE FRONT! You’re sure taking a long time… What’s the hold-up?”

“You gonna buy any gas sir?” Mac said to one such customer.

“Yeah, put eighty cents worth in the tank, will ya?”

I could see Mac’s face grimace, and I knew he wasn’t gonna take much more shit before he blew his stack. Mac put eighty cents in the tank, after-which he pulled the nozzle out and replaced the gas cap.

“That’ll be eighty cents sir.”

The man threw a handful of change out the window, started the car and burned rubber out of the station and back onto the street.

“Merry Christmas asshole,” Mac said while picking up quarters, nickels and pennies.

More and more rolled in. At some points, Mac had three or four cars waiting, the drivers looking at their watches with anticipation, perhaps late for appointments or work. Mac quickly made his way to each one, getting the fuel started so they couldn’t just drive off.

Finally by nine, Mac’s long time helper Ivar arrived to relieve him on the pumps so Mac could get some of the mechanic’s work done on customers’ cars already waiting in the shop bays.

I was scared of Ivar. He had never done anything to me, I just found him disconcerting in my child’s mind. He was on the small side for a forty-year-old grown man. Almost as small as me at twelve, but with a booming voice and a perpetual five-o-clock shadow, even at nine in the morning. But looking back, he was a stand-up guy and hustled gasoline like a good pump jockey should. As far as his car repairing abilities were concerned, he was slow, too slow for the service station business. Sometimes, he would even lose parts, or fouled everything up somehow. That’s why Mac always kept him off of the shop duties and out front on the gas pumps.

“I just can’t trust him on tune-ups or even belts and hoses, let alone a brake job… He screws it up. So I keep him on the pumps… He seems to have that down pretty good.” Mac told me once.

Ding-ding, ding-ding! One after another pulled in for fuel, and some came around back for repairs. Tires, batteries, oil changes, Mac had a steady stream of business. Occasionally a water pump, alternator, or starter replacement would show up. The heavier work like transmission replacement or engine overhauls went down the street to the shops specializing in that sort of thing.

Ding-ding, ding-ding! All morning, the sound of that bell over and over became grueling. And it wasn’t a soft bell either, it was loud and harsh so you could hear it in a noisy shop setting. From where I was sitting in the office, I could see cars coming in off the highway and I would brace myself for it -- ding-ding, ding-ding! That night when I was drifting off to sleep, I swear I heard that bell.

By noon, Mac and I left the station for lunch and Ivar took over. We walked a few doors down the street to a hamburger stand. This was the type where the customer simply walked up and ordered from a small window. A skinny, pimply faced teenager wearing a paper hat took our order and disappeared for what seemed like a long time, while doing God knows what.

“What the hell’s that guy doin’ back there?” Mac said looking at his wristwatch.

A few minutes later, a hand with a white bag containing our burgers appeared from the window.

“Have a nice day.”

We sat at an outdoor covered area with plastic picnic tables and had our lunch. I could almost feel the worry in Mac’s composure. It was as if he wasn’t too terribly confident in Ivar’s abilities running the station alone, even for a few minutes while we ate burgers. There was the money, credit cards, customers and the ever continuous complaints. Worst of all, the office was empty whenever Ivar was out at the pumps.

“We’d better get back,” he said just as I stuffed the last bite of a cheeseburger down my gullet.

“Is it steam or smoke?” I said on our walk back.

“That’s steam, What’s goin’ on?” Mac said to Ivar as he lifted the hood on a beat-up green Chrysler sedan.

“He’s overheatin’, leaky radiator I think,” Ivar said.

“Well, run it around the back and I’ll have a look at ’er,” Mac told the driver.

The driver, a disheveled looking man of about thirty, climbed back in to move it around to the garage entry. A very pregnant woman sat with a worried expression looking out the passenger side window, and a brood of dirty faced children bounced around in the back seat, with one kid even lying on the shelf under the rear window.

“You kids knock it off back there!” the dad said.

Me and Mac walked through the office and met the car in the back.

“You gotta a split lower radiator hose,” Mac said, the car still spewing hot steam. “I’ll write you out an estimate.”

“Ah sir, your names Mac?” the man said looking at the embroidered tag on my grandfather’s shirt. “I’m a little low on cash, I got some tools in the trunk you can have, a socket wrench, some screwdrivers?”

Mac stayed quiet for a few seconds pondering what to do next. “Or I can come back with some money, my in-laws live a few miles away, we can come back and pay you?”

“Tell ya what,” Mac said. “We’ll talk about that when we’re done, I think I have a hose for this model…you guys wait in the office.”

The front and rear passenger doors opened and children poured out, some small and crying, others bigger and troublesome, and the mother corralled them into the office. I could see one of the older boys through the shop door window milling around and fiddling with the Coke machine, trying to get bottles of soda pop out of it without any coins. Ivar came into the office from the pumps aware of what was happening, and after some sharp but muffled words, the boy sat down.

Fifteen minutes passed and Mac was done with the repair.

“Looks like ya got your hands full with all them kids and another one in the oven,” Mac said to the guy. “Tell ya what, it’s under ten bucks, so…just forget it…just get this thing outta here.”

“Well, I ain’t no charity case, so I’ll be back later with the money, I can promise you that.” The family mounted back up into the old Chrysler, which was an ordeal in its self. He then backed his car out of the bay.

“Hey, stop, stop, stop!” Mac yelled, but it was too late. The driver missed Ivar’s new little Ford Pinto, but clipped Mac’s longer Cadillac in the left rear fender, THUD!

“Why the hell didn’t you stop! How ya gonna pay for that? he said pointing at his beautiful, but now flawed ’66 Caddy.

“I’m sorry, Mac, I’ll…”

But Mac cut him off, “Just get this Goddamn thing outta here, and don’t come back,” Mac said pointing at Aurora Avenue.

I had never seen my grandfather truly angry before, at least not like this. The old jalopy roared out of the service station and headed southbound on Aurora, dirty faced children crying and peering back at us from the rear window.

“Will ya look at that.” Mac said shaking his head. “I don’t think that goofball was too bright.”

Scared, I said nothing and shook my head too.

“I’ll have to deal with this later, I’ll talk to Tony down at the body shop later this week,” he said still shaking his head.

Mac needed parts for the customers’ cars he was repairing, so we left in his Caddy for the parts store.

In the world of automotive repair, all the shop owners in the area knew each other. There was Tony at the body shop, Harold the transmission guy a block away and Ralph at the muffler place, where Mac sent a lot of business. And of course the guys down at the parts store where Mac brought his daily list of parts he needed for the customers’ cars.

Except for a few of the newer employees, the usual guys always had the latest jokes making the rounds. There were the clean, okay to tell around children jokes, but normally only the worst, unrepeatable filth made the cut. I was now twelve, so it was okay to tell some of these around me I had begun to notice. Of course most I didn’t understand but I laughed along anyways…

We drove back to the station with the new parts and parked carefully around back. We got out and walked by the dent, neither discussing it. In fact, he didn’t mention it for the rest of the day. Around six, he drove me home to my folks and never said a word. It was as if he forgot momentarily, or worked out a solution in his mind.

“Well… Did ya have fun today? That’s a long day for a kid like you, over twelve hours!”

“Yeah, it was great, except for the dent,” I said.

Mac’s expression went from cheerful to solemn.

“Well, it’s just one of them things ya gotta deal with once in a while,” he said. “I’ll get Tony to look at it this week or next.”

* * *

A couple of weeks passed and Christmas vacation was over. School started back up and I was lamenting having to go back to the same old dreary schedule. Mac came over to our house late one evening with a business sized envelope in his hand.

“You guys, you’re not gonna believe this,” he said to me and my folks. “Remember that guy who backed into my car a few days before Christmas? Well, apparently his father slipped this letter under the office door at the station. I found it this morning when I went in. Let me read it to you.

"Dear Mac;

It has come to my attention that my son Joe and his family visited your gas station a while back. I just wanted to thank you for partially being the catalyst that brought him back into my life. We haven’t spoken in a number of years but with the birth of their fifth child last week, he came to me for help financially. This is where you come into the picture. He told me he had damaged a car at your garage and had no money to pay for it, and you let him go. Although I don’t agree with him not paying for his mistakes, this was a very kind gesture. Enclosed is two hundred dollars. I hope this is sufficient to pay for the damage caused by his recklessness and irresponsibility. Believe me, he will be paying me back. I wanted to thank you personally, Mac, for being so forgiving to my son… He hasn’t had too many breaks in life.

Sincerely, Jake Smith"

Mac was happy that evening and I know the letter brought some closure for him.

Some years later, my grandfather retired from his long career in the service station industry. I’ve always looked back at that period in the early 1970s with much fondness. There were many times I spent the workday with Mac, either during Summer vacation or Christmas break when my folks were working. I like the idea of those full-service stations from long ago where the mechanic hustled out to the customer’s car and looked it over while re-fueling it. One would think there would be a niche today for such a thing, as people really don’t want to do this for themselves. Nevertheless, it was an education in human nature a person would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

The Cadillac was eventually sold and replaced with something more fuel efficient. I don’t think the dent was ever fixed as I recalled seeing it as an adult, and I remembered clearly the day it happened.

Image by That Hartford GuyCC BY-SA 32.0 cropped and colorized.