Remember When...

Driving into work this morning, I was listening to my favorite morning drive radio program, the Dunham and Miller Show on KTCK 1310 The Ticket (Dallas, TX). The Ticket is a sports station that features both sports talk and general "guy" talk. During the 8:10 segment, they got into "gas station" talk.

What childhood memories they provoked! I had all but forgotten what a magical place the gas station, or "filling station" as my parents called it, really was. If you are long enough in the tooth to remember the attendant in the blue polyesters with his name stitched in red on a white oval patch just above the left shirt pocket; if you can recall the ever-present red shop rag dangling from a hip pocket, the plastic bottle of window cleaner and a squeegie in his hand, a tire gauge in his shirt pocket; if you have ever uttered the words - or at least heard your dad say, "Fill 'er up"; if you remember when the gas pumps were tall and narrow and the numbers weren't LCD but were white numbers on black wheels that rolled as the gas was pumped; if you remember the vending machines with the Tom's peanut crunch treats, or the Orange Crush soda pop, or the assorted Lance's chips choices; if you ever said yes to the question of whether to check the oil, or watched appreciatively as the attendant checked the air level in each tire with care; if you can recall the garage stalls with the hydraulic lifts for doing everything from changing the oil in your car to replacing the starter; if you remember when Exxon and Mobil were two entities and Exxon wasn't even Exxon anyways, but Enco; if you remember the Sinclair Dinosaur, how magical the Texaco star seemed; if any of this strikes a chord of familiarity, then you know where I am coming from.

If you don't remember any of these things, you don't know what you missed. You didn't pay the pump back then. Nor did you turn your hard-earned dollar over to some dude of Eastern descent who makes ten times the money you do but still buys his clothes at a thrift shop and apparently thinks daily hygiene is superfluous. The owner's name was Joe or Mac or Jimmy...or in the case of one small Texas town, David.

Yep! My own Dad was the proud owner of a Mobil filling station back when. And for a period of my adolescence, I roamed the magical, manly place without restriction or retribution. I even filled a few tanks and tires, wiped some windhields, and changed the oil in a few old clunkers. It was a good place for a boy to learn what it means to be a man, to take proper care of the things you have, to be courteous and friendly to customers, to develop relationships, to learn responsibility.

I am glad I was there...and just as glad I was reminded of that time and place this morning.