The Answer Man (Part 3)

    





    The only other person who worked at the station was Tom Campbell.  He had a cool old car, a young wife, and some kids.  I liked him a lot.  He would say things like, "No sweat" and "Bye, now."  Ever since then, I like to use those expressions because they sound folksy, sincere, and reassuring. He didn't seem to pick up on the extent to which I was an impostor.  Or if he did, he didn't let on.  He only worked there one, or at most, two days a week and I wished he were there more often. 

    There was a kid in my school who didn’t normally ride our bus, but one day, freshman year, he appeared in the seat in front of mine.  I didn't like the look of him.  His name was Victor.  As he turned to yell across the aisle, I involuntarily popped him.  Not hard enough to cause any real injury, except maybe to his pride.  It was the sort of thing a much (much) younger kid would do.  Just a knee-jerk reaction to some ugliness in front of me.  He didn’t retaliate, but hitting him was a bad idea. (Well, again, it wasn't so much an idea, it just sort of happened.)  I didn’t see him around after that and I felt bad about what happened.

    My pre-closing routine included jotting down on my clipboard the readings on the pumps.  As I was walking back from the diesel pump one night, I heard talking.  I walked through the store and saw some kid sitting on the window seat in the office.  He looked at 
me with a what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it expression.  Who was he talking to?  I walked into the office and Victor was sitting in my chair.  No, Don's chair!  

    After a three-year absence, Victor had recently reappeared at school, and he seemed to hold a grudge, made some vaguely threatening gestures in the hallways.  He had long, thick, greasy blond hair.  Victor had filled out and was getting pretty big.

    I can't let these punks disrespect Don's office.  They started making dumb wisecracks and laughing, acting like they owned the place.  (Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe he was Don's nephew or something, and Don sent him down to show me how to do the job without fucking it up.)  I told him he couldn’t hang around in there, had to buy something or get going.

    There was going to be a reckoning.

    Presumably, he was younger than I, but he was a farm kid.  ‘Course I was a farm kid, too, but he was a real farm kid, whereas I was more of a gentleman farmer's kid.  My family farmed just for the experience, so we could say that we’d done it.  Maybe Victor was going to kick my ass just for the experience, so he could say that he’d done it.

    It didn't occur to me to make a phone call.  I had to defend the fort.

    Hey, I can throw 50-pound bales four tiers up.  Five tiers on a good day.  I’ve held on for dear life when a horse with a bad attitude tried to run me under low-hanging branches. I’ve stuck an old, weathered pitchfork through my left foot, and subsequently watched that foot blow up like a balloon with infection. (My dad had pulled it out suddenly in the middle of saying, "Okay, so I think the best..."  Talented though he is, he apparently didn't have the necessary materials on the farm to manufacture a tetanus shot and didn't think a drive to the city was called for.)  Hurt like hell.  I can take it!

    The showdown started in the store area and then sprawled out to the garage.  I didn’t remember much of what actually happened.  We were both flailing; I tripped over a lift and hit the now-closed garage door. I would employ the rope-a-dope strategy and then lay him out, I thought. We were pretty much tied up when suddenly it was over.  I could see Victor standing there with a big smudge of black grease on the side of his face, looking less sure of himself. I guess he'd had enough. His buddy must've skedaddled.

    Had I battled Victor to a draw?  It could be done!  I felt a surge of confidence.  The defiant voice of Roger Daltrey boomed in the back of my head.  

Out here in the fields, 
I fight for my meals.  
I get my back into my living! 

    

     I had defended the fort.  Be gone, you ruffian!

    By the time I got my glasses straightened out, I could see more grease all over Victor’s neck.  Oh, and there’s Vern.  Unbeknownst to me, one of our best regulars had been in the back, up to his armpits in his Mack’s tranny, when he caught wind of what was going on. 

    “No fighting in my garage!”  Vern barked.  Victor headed for the exit.  “Don’t let me catch you in here again.”

     "Yeah." I added, in case he didn't get it the first time.  

     After Victor was gone, I wondered, "How’d he get grease all over himself?”

     Vern shook his head and said, “I had to grab him.” 

I don’t need to fight, 
to prove I’m right 
I don’t need to be forgiven...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-eh, yeah-eh!

    

      I had never been in any fights until senior year.  Then, counting Victor, I got into four.  Went through a phase.  Boys go through this.  Everything bugs them; everything is a showdown.  Farm life kept me in pretty good shape, so I mostly held my own.

    During gym class, a kid named Ed took issue with something I said, and we rumbled in the locker room.  Coincidentally, Ed ended up getting into a car accident not far from the Shell station, and when he and his passenger came in to call for help, looking pretty traumatized, he acted like we were best of friends.  And why wouldn’t he?  Why shouldn’t we be friends?  Water under the bridge.  The things that cause fights in high school...

    Junior year, a guy on the wrestling team named Kevin gave me a hard time.  He would knock stuff out of my hand.  I remember saying, “You do that again and you’ll suffer the consequences.”  His younger brother,  Nathan, was standing by at the time, and henceforth would  taunt me by calling out, “Hey, Mister Suffer-the-Consequences.”  By senior year, I heard from a sweet classmate that Kevin had been murdered.  What?!  I didn’t know what to say, and didn’t ask her about it.  Never heard anything more.   At the end of the year, Nathan signed my yearbook:  “Chris, we had fun in typing and gym.  Your friend, Nathan.”   As usual, I didn’t know how to answer.

The Answer Man (Part 2)

(con'd from Apr 5)

    Weekdays my shift started at 4:00 and finished at 10:00.  For the most part, I kept busy and enjoyed the job.  The pumps back then had heavy-guage wire spiralling the length of the nozzle, so you could hang it on the side of the car and go do something else while it filled. When you pulled the nozzle out of  old pump number three, the wraps of wire would play on the thin metal siding, and it made a “Bah DAH dah dah dah” sound, like the drum riff that begins every reggae song.  I sometimes wondered what it would sound like if a customer drove away with the nozzle still stuck in their tank.  Decidedly less peaceful than reggae, no doubt.

    What bothered me was when I didn’t have time to adequately mind the garage and prevent theft.  There were two blockheads who came in a lot to hang around, and eventually I told them the garage wasn’t available.  “Mr Sullivan said that until further notice the bays aren’t for rent.  There’s a problem with fluids leaking,” or something.  They weren’t buying it.  I probably should have told Mr Sullivan about these two guys, but what was I going to say?  “Well, Mr Sullivan, I can’t say for sure that they’re stealing because I didn’t have them sign off on the pre-rent inventory.  Well, because I was too busy.” 

  

    By around 8:30 things started to slow down.  Sodas from the machine were 40 cents, and the coffee back in the employees area was free, so I’d get hopped up on coffee, sit behind the desk and listen to the radio.  I had put in a good day's work and now I was sitting in Don's chair. In the lair of all that practical knowledge. He had various reference books w/ part numbers and so forth. There was glossy promotional material for all the Shell products. Don really knew the service station game.  I was ensconced in the wheelhouse of Answer Man wisdom while Mick Jagger reminded me that "Some girls they're so pure
Some girls so corrupt
Some girls give me children
I only made love to her once"   

    One night, I thought to look in the big bottom drawer of Don's desk. 

    What I found in there was a trove of nasty porn: an assortment of messy, extreme men’s magazines anchored by Hustler.  Up until that point in my life, I’d only seen a few Playboys with my older brother's friends up in the sugar house. I closed the drawer. 

    Now that I’m thinking about it, I’d seen an issue of a classy French magazine called lui while in Quebec with the French Club.  It emphasized natural beauty, the photos being set in the pretty countryside, the models holding up pears in the orchard, that sort of thing.

    Nobody wants to be the last to know what's what.  After carefully surveying the garage area and checking for any activity outside, I delved in:  “What the… Oh, my.  So that’s how it is.  The lay of the land threw me.  Women had certainly changed from the days of bucolic frolic.  All at once I was glad that I wasn’t a female, yet resentful of being a male.

 

     I thought about what kind of man Don is, and how he seemed so different from Mr Sullivan, who was very quiet, very tall and rather intimidating in the slow, deliberate way that he moved.

      So I would get my chores out of the way, sell some refined crude, put the dwindling complement of tools back, then settle in for that last hour.  The desk would beckon to me, and I’d head in with another hot cup of creamy, sugary coffee.  It’s strange.  I’m realizing now that it would be another year or so before my first bone-density self exam with the Sears catalog. I must've been four years behind most guys, I guess.  Those evenings... wired on free coffee... poring over porn... then I’d just lock up, drive home and go to sleep.  Unresolved.  Unfathomable.

    Mr Sullivan almost never showed up, but of course, the time he did, on a Sunday afternoon, there were a few issues of adult entertainment out on the desk.  The big picture window in front of the desk did not afford a view of the north entrance to the station.  The second that Mr. Sullivan passed in front of the window, I threw the smut into the big drawer and sprang to my feet, trying not to look too freaked out.  While the Answer Man coveralls do indeed hide many sins, they couldn't begin to cover how bad I felt about myself at that moment.  He came through the front door and turned into the office.  He didn’t say much, but seemed to be in a bad mood. 

    He wasn't accusing me of anything (at least I don't think he was) but he was disappointed.
   

    The next time I reported for work, I noticed a sign on the wall behind the register saying that at no time should employees be sitting around doing nothing.  If the station is slow, there is a long list of jobs that need doing.  I felt sheepish and guilty.  Then again, Don obviously looked at these publications, and he did a bang-up job running the place.  Maybe a bit of animal spirits is conducive to properly running a service station. 

(to be cont'd)

The Answer Man (Part 1)

      Driving south from our high school, Sullivan's Shell Station was on the left side of the main road before you get up to cruising speed.  Nicely appointed, with a split rail fence fronting the highway, and extending along the sides of the property, the place had a rustic charm. When facing the station, from right to left, you had the self-serve air and the diesel pump, two gigantic DIY garage bays, a nice store area with vending machines, (and a little back room for employees), a very cozy office and on the other side of the office, the restroom, whose key hung from the obligatory huge block of wood.

    Back then, the attendant didn’t just sit inside and run the register; no sir, he had to pump the gas, check the oil, wash the windows and even take a crack at diagnosing car trouble.  The two fully-equipped garage bays were rented by the hour and he had to go over tool inventory with each customer pre- and post-rental.  Never a dull moment. 

    The guidance counselor helped me get the job, my first non-farm work.  For five years, I had been toiling in the fields fifteen miles south of the station, in the middle of nowhere, on our farm.

Out here in the fields
I fight for my meals
I get my back into my living  

    I was a senior with the social awareness and skills of a 13-year old and needed to expand my vistas.  Or at least do something I could put on my college applications.  I now had real responsibility, handling money, dealing with the public, and doling out apologies.

    The manager’s name was Don Wesson.  He kind of looked—and acted—like Humphrey Bogart, hair slicked back, weathered face, the short sleeves of his name-bearing yellow shirt rolled up.  I admired the way Don ran the place.  He really had a nose for the job, and didn’t take any crap.  He looked like the kind of guy you’d want minding the station. He was nice to me but I couldn't help wondering if he was a bit perplexed as to why I was hired for this.

     Back in those days, Shell had an ad campaign that touted the knowledge of their attendants:  Ask the Shell Answer Man.  The company issued me a crisp, brown pair of coveralls with a bright yellow Shell patch sewn on the breast.  I would’ve looked resplendent, but at sixteen, sporting braces, geeky wire-rimmed glasses, and a pencil neck, I probably looked like a kid dressing up for Halloween as a mechanic.  

    One day I came to school in a short-sleeved golf shirt that had a colored body and a white collar.  So when I got into my coveralls, the white collar was all you could see.  Don remarked that I looked like a priest.  I knew nothing about religion but even back then, in the late seventies, I didn’t like the sound of that. 

     I was book smart but had zero mechanical skills. My older brother was a pretty good mechanic and we all had dirt bikes.  My physicist dad studied mechanical engineering and could fix/build anything. He had a small Cessna for trips to Chicago.  I don't remember him ever taking flying lessons but there were some issues of Flying magazine lying around in the john. He built a sawmill at our farm from scratch. Built our tennis court. We were quite self-sufficient out there. But I could barely change a spark plug.  

    Another thing I knew nothing about was women.  Teenagers today don’t have that problem.  With the internet all you have to do is go to the How Stuff Works website, type in “women,” and everything you need to know is right there.  Don was very knowledgeable about women; I could overhear him talking to some of the ladies. Thinking back on it 35 years later, he probably went home to an empty house every night like police chief Gillespie in the film In the Heat of the Night.  

(to be cont'd)