Left to Right, Shooster’s Gas Station, shooster’s Ice House, Shooster’s Second Gas Station
Young and old, rich and poor, sunny days and winter nights, everyone needed and appreci- ated fuel, service, and a welcome greeting. There were no set hours for any of the stations back then. In our case, we just opened when we could, usually at 10 am, and stayed open until 10 pm. No one was open 24 hours. If you didn’t get gas or service during the hour’s stations were open, you just didn’t get it until the next day. I remember a long, concrete island with all the brands we sold. Each had a pump with its own brand. Fuel wasn’t standardized like it is today. It seems funny now, but we repre- sented over 13 different brands at our tiny station. Among them were Gulf, Good Gulf, Essolene, Standard, Leader, Atlantic, Sinclair, American, Amoco, Richfield, Texaco, Tydol, Atlantic White Flash, and Ethyl. The amusing thing is I’m not sure if the suppliers knew the right hole to put their brand. I bet many times they just filled another brand’s pump. To help attract business, we kept the place spit-polish clean. I used to mix lime and water into a ‘whitewash’ and paint the sides of our concrete island. If it didn’t sparkle, I did it again. Eventually, the Lee Tire Company erected a huge vertical sign in the middle of all those pumps, and we added tire sales to the mix. We were in business. Maybe just by our fingernails, but we were in business.
Usually, Harry or Izzy would open up the station. If my dad and I got there before them, we would have to open up ourselves. Open- ing up was an ambitious process. First, the gasoline pumps had to be turned on, and then the tires rolled out of the garage and put out on display. Oil cans, in quart and two-gallon cans, had to be placed into a pyramid display, and last, a small bag of coins and dollar bills opened and placed into the cash register. And then we waited until a car would pull up. One of us would rush out to meet the driver, “Fill’er up, mister?” If we were lucky, we would sell a tire or some oil. We also sold retreads. A driver might ask for the special, seven gallons for a dollar. For that, I would pump the gas, clean all their windows, lift the hood, check the oil, put water in the radiator in the summer or anti-freeze in the winter, then the driver would pull the car over to the air hose and would make sure his inner tubes were full. Today you’d be hard-pressed to find all this service. For us, it was business as usual. We embraced it as a great way to differenti- ate ourselves. In this way, we lived up to the expression, “Earning business the good ‘ole fashioned way.” The modern world could use a lesson in this.
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