Sunday, March 10, 2019

Where are you Sam?



Can we talk about gasoline?  When I was a kid, there were two kinds of gasoline that my father put in our car – regular, or regular that he pumped himself.  Oh yes, this was a special money saving aspect of the gas station back then.  Gas was a couple cents cheaper if you did it yourself.  However, there was still always the option of letting the gas station attendant do it.  Daddy would pump the gas on trips to the hardware store or lumberyard, but if, for example, we were heading out to Long Island to my grandparent’s for Thanksgiving, he let the attendant do it. 
These men fascinated me.  When we drove into the station, the car would roll over the long, black air hose, dinging the bell somewhere in the repair bay, and we would sit and wait for the man in the grimy uniform (with a name like Bob or Sam embroidered on the left breast pocket) to come loping across to our car. 
“Filler up?” he’d ask, picking something unknown from his perpetually blackened fingernails. 
“Yes, with regular” Daddy would answer.  What did we care about unleaded gas – we were driving a Volkswagen bus – hardly a high-performance car, but one that fit all seven family members with six of them getting window seats.
When Sam (or Bob) had checked the oil, washed the windows, and topped off the tank, Daddy would hand him a credit card, and Sam (or Bob) would disappear into the depths of the gas station, and we would wait for him to return with a little plastic tray with the charge card and several pieces of tissue paper all held together. As he’d pass the tray through the window, I could see the creases in his skin were filled with grease as black as that in his fingernails. Daddy would sign the papers, rip one off and keep it, and thank Bob or Sam who would look puzzled for a minute, then say, “Oh, no, this is just Sam’s shirt – I’m Tommy.”
Where, oh, where are Bob (or Sam or Tommy)?  How I long to see one of them with their grimy hands, as I pull into a gas station, dressed for the theatre, wearing my expensive perfume and velvet skirt.  But no, Sam or Bob or Tommy has departed along with the other heroes of my childhood, Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers.  So, after pumping the gas, and washing the windows, I return to my car, no longer smelling of  “Obsession” or “White Shoulders” but of unleaded gasoline and windshield washer fluid.   I miss you Sam, Bob…

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