On January 3rd, 1970 I headed up to Black’s Service Station with a dime in my pocket. Back in 1970 you could get 8 – 10 pounds of candy for a dime. They had 2 caramels for a penny!! Today if you go to that same location to the convenience store that replaced Black’s Service Station you will have to pay .75 to air up your tires. Advantage 1970.
Black’s Service Station was run by two brothers who were already well over 100 years old when I started frequenting the place back in the late 60’s. They had a picture on the wall of the time Abe Lincoln came in to get a tire changed on his horse. I can’t remember their names so for this exercise I will call them Phil and Jim.
Pete ran the inside of the shop. He hated kids. Probably because of that bell hose thing that laid on the ground that rang when a car came in signaling a customer was here for gas. We children made sure to constantly ring that bell all day long, We set up shifts to make sure there weren’t any long breaks of silence. I only weighed about 30 pounds so I needed the assistance of a bicycle or one of the 75 thousand tires that were leaning against the backside of the station.
The other brother John did all the work there. He pumped the gas, changed the oil, did engine overhauls, colonoscopies and the occasional lap band surgery. His knuckles were the sized of softballs so if you took a football in to get aired up it took him about 7 hours to get the needle into the football. All while the 55 year old hose that he held hissed. It always did. Every time you went in there it felt like the whole place was seconds away from exploding. It added to the ambiance.
Paul never left the inside of the station. He was in charge of monitoring the security they used which comprised of a sliding door on the candy counter and a pull open door on the old Coke water cooler that held the soda. I’d like to say none of the local kids took advantage of the lack of security but the 103% diabetes rate in the area tells a different story.
But not me though. I had a dime remember.
Stuff that Probably Happened 