My First Job

In the summer of 1970 I spotted a "help wanted" sign at the Humble (aka Enco) gas station on the southwest corner of West Front and South Bonner in Tyler, Texas. (As of this writing the building is still there but it is now home to Paco's Tire Shop.)

The old fart that owned the station offered me $1 per hour. That was well below the $1.75 minimum wage but it was was "part time" so it was exempt - at least that's what he told me :-) There weren't many opportunities for guys with longish hair in Tyler at the time so I accepted... The deal was that he was supposed to call me when he needed extra help - but that turned out to be every day :-) Yeah - it was effectively full time.

Aside: There were always job openings at the local tire plant. They started you out at $5 per hour (that's around $25 adjusted for inflation) but you had to spend 10 hours a day in a fireproof suit pouring molten rubber out of a cauldron. Guys who had worked there told me the heat was beyond imagination - pure torture. After a couple of years they would let you switch to an easier job but very few people ever lasted that long... So I never applied :-)

The old fart that owned the gas station was quite the tightwad. His only other employee was a middle aged black man with a drinking problem who was the station's mechanic but also helped at the pumps when it got busy... I was amazed that he ever got any mechanical work done what with the constant interruptions... (BTW: I really enjoyed hanging out with him when the owner wasn't around. I don't remember what all we talked about but we had a good time.)

The station was one of the more expensive ones in the area - I think regular was around 22 cents a gallon - but the big selling point was service. If you bought more than 10 gallons we would check the oil, clean the windshield and vacuum the carpets. (There's a story about that later.) That made things really hectic when the station was busy.

BTW: You would be stunned at how many people "accidentally" honk the horn while an attendant is checking the oil. After whacking my head on the hood 2 or 3 times I learned to not flinch so much :-)

OK - this is kind of funny: I only ever pretended to check the oil... The station owner had demonstrated the process of pulling out the dipstick, wiping it off and rechecking it but he didn't explain what the markings meant. I guess he figured it was self-explanatory - and it sort of was - but I wasn't 100% sure and wouldn't ask for confirmation for fear of appearing stupid... So I would just look at the dipstick and say it was fine... My rationale was that the motorist would eventually stop at another station where the attendant knew what he was doing :-)

Now - here's the "vacuuming the front carpets" story. And yes - there was a girl involved:
Most of the customers would step out of the car while you vacuumed the driver side floorboard but some didn't. When women stayed in the car they would usually swing both their legs over to the passenger side... But one day as I was preparing to vacuum the floorboard this lovely young blond in a mini-skirt just spread her knees to either side of the steering wheel and pulled her feet back against the seat... I stopped dead in my tracks (for obvious reasons) and asked her if she wouldn't rather get out of the car. She was clearly amused by my hesitance and assured me it was OK to proceed.
The cleaning attachment was hooked directly to the vacuum hose (no wand) so you had to pretty much get up under the dash to do the job and I went through some incredible contortions to avoid touching her legs. To make matters worse, the carpet was a serious mess - especially around the gas pedal... I spent what seemed like an eternity with my head between her knees repeating "Don't look!!!" to myself over and over... (I didn't look, BTW.)

You know - the main reason I remember the incident so clearly is that I was incredibly shy at the time and having my face so close to ... well - you know ... was something I was not mentally prepared for. I was literally trembling afterwards... I never could understand why so many women in the south enjoyed teasing guys that way. I can only imagine how amused she would have been if she'd known I would still remember it 40 years later :-)

Now - your probably wondering why I quit the job after 3 weeks. That's kind of hard to explain but I'll do my best:
I routinely rang up all my cash and credit card transactions but the owner handled the personal checks because he had a rather baroque system for totaling them in the cash register. He showed me once but apparently didn't expect me to "get it" because - like I said - he always handled them himself...
So one day he left me alone at the station for a few hours and while he was gone I took in something like 5 checks. I understood his system perfectly well so I just went ahead and rang them up and stuck them under the change tray...
When he got back he found the checks and started to ring them up again. I was about to tell him that I had already taken care of it when it occurred to me that he might be upset that I had done it without his explicit permission... And after I hesitated I couldn't say anything because then he'd be mad that I didn't tell him right away... By the time he finished ringing them all up I realized that I was completely screwed because at end the of the day (after I left) the totals would be off and he would eventually figure out that I sat there watching him ring up those checks without saying a word knowing full well I had already done it. (And what kind of freaking idiot does that???)
So I spent the rest of the day mulling over my options and decided that there were only two: Tell him before I left and deal with the consequences, or say nothing and never go back.

So I quit :-)