The other day as I filled-up my new four-wheel drive, V6, campaign-retirement-good feeling pickup truck with ethanol blended fuel and watched the digital cost monitor spin like an out of control slot machine, my thoughts went back to simpler times, when a fill-up of gas was something of an enjoyment.
It was nothing like today, when every time we fill-up, we have to wonder which vital organ we’ll have to sell next just to pay the bill, and if the Icee machine is still going to have Cola flavor available or just the old blue kind.
I’m talking about the days when a service station provided what the first part of its name implied – service. Back in those days, when you pulled up to the pump, a young man with his name on his shirt would greet you with a smile and ask that important question: “Fill ‘er up?” He’d then put either high-test or regular gasoline in your tank, and move almost in a run to the front of your car as you got one of those small bottles of Coca-Cola from the red box out front. After a search for the hood latch, he’d then raise your car’s hood and grab the dipstick to check the oil in the engine. While there, he also felt of the hoses and belts to see if they were safe to get you on down the road. Slamming the hood shut, he’d next take out a gray shop rag from his back pocket and wipe off his handprints from the hood. Usually, the shop rag was also greasy, but he was trying, and that’s what mattered.
Next, in almost one motion, he’d grab a squeegee from a bucket of water, and using the same rag he wiped off your hood with, he’d clean your windshield. After completing all of these assignments, he’d finish filling your tank, and if you purchased at least ten gallons of gas, you could receive a cup with the station’s logo on it, or even better, a bank shaped like a dinosaur to put your saved pennies in. Of course, that was back when a penny was saved and not left to be smashed into the pavement in area parking lots.
The good part was that all of this might not have cost you more than .35 cents a gallon and a total bill of something over $5. You’d leave the station without the smell of gasoline on your hands and shoes, a clean windshield, and sometimes with a fresh quart of oil in your engine.
Not today. Instead, you pull up to the pump, stick in a piece of plastic, causing the computer to harass you over whether it’s a debit or a credit transaction, and to try to sell you a super-duper car wash. Then, someone from inside a bullet-proof enclosure speaks over a microphone telling you pump number five is ready, and their dark chocolate latte coffee is only “a buck twenty-five” with a fill up today. After filling up your tank, you notice that you need to make a call to the bank for a loan, and that this fill-up has increased the resale value of your automobile. You also told the machine that had your credit card that you wanted a paper receipt, but instead, it pretended to print one, said thank you and gave you nothing, causing you to have to go into the “Get It and Run” and ask the person behind the glass to give you one. And they’re not all that happy to do so because Bubba forgot to put paper in the machine and you smell like gasoline.
There’s really no comparison to the two events mentioned here other than the fact that in both cases we thought the gasoline was high. Remembering prices at .25, I also remember when gas went to .40, and everyone thought that was high. Back in those days, gas pumps contained only three spaces for a price, and when gasoline fill-ups went to over $10, new pumps had to be bought. But, you did get service with your visit, and whether you stopped at Sinclair, Esso, Lion or Mobile, service was important and the thing that brought back customers. Service stations in those days were in the people business much more than the gas business.
Today, we’ve swapped the service of yesterday for the convenience of today. If a store doesn’t have that Icee machine, latte coffee, a full-line of groceries, a selection of drinks that fills two walls of the store, and a car wash, then we might not stop. I didn’t mention restrooms because, from the dawn of time, that’s always been a gamble on what you get.
Yes, fuel prices are high. But it has never been cheap to operate a vehicle, starting all the way back with Mr. Ford.
Pettus L. Read writes for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. v