Full Service Gas Stations

It really hasn't been that long ago when we had full service gas stations. As you pulled up to the fuel tanks the bell would ring(from bell hose running across drive in front of pumps) to let the attendant know that he had a customer.

The attendant would come out and ask you how much gas did you need and then he would open your gas tank and get the amount of gas that you needed. He would also check your oil, and water in the radiator as well as the air in your tires and clean your windshield. Everything was full service and done with a smile.

You and your family could use extra clean restrooms and get a map for the road ahead. The cold drinks were ice cold in the drink boxes and if you were lucky some even had some ice in them.

If you needed and oil change or service work there was a mechanic on duty to serve your needs.

Maybe you needed a set of tires or maybe just a flat tire fixed they could do that as well.

I remember when we would pull in with our VW Bus and tell the attendant that we wanted 8 cents of gas and would he check the water in the radiator. Some that didn't know that the VW was an air-cooled engine instead of a water-cooled engine couldn't find the radiator and we would just laugh and say we must have lost it, as they finished checking our oil, water, tires and washing our windshield.

The attendant said I'll give you a push so you can coast to the red light and not burn up all 8 cents of your gas.

Oh, I forgot to say that gas then was 25 to 27 cents a gallon and the car would hold a whole $5.00 of gas.

Looking For A Job

My oldest sister turned sixteen and my dad thought that it would be good for her if she were to work for someone other than with him at the store so she could get some experience working for other people.

So she got ready to go and talk to some people that were hiring in our area and my mother took her for her interviews. She stayed in the car while Lucy went in to see about a job.

Each time after being there she would come out and get in the car and mother would ask her how the interview went and did she get the job. She told her it went well and that they said that they would give her a call later.

Several days went by and my dad was down at the bank and he ran into the man at the bank where she had had an interview. My dad asked the man how the interview went and he told my dad that he didn't think that my sister wanted a job. My dad said why do you say this.

Well, after I told her what we were looking for I asked her did she have any questions and she said yes. He said what questions do you have. Well how much do you pay?, How long do I have to work before I get a raise?, What are the hours I have to work?, How long do I get off for lunch?. I long do I have to work before I get a vacation?  She never asked anything about the work, so I didn't think she wanted a job.

So when she went on her next interview she got the job on the spot.

Palmer Waters

My Big Sis

If you've ever had an older sibling you will know what I am talking about but if you didn't just look what you missed.

Mother didn't leave us alone very much we either went with her or dad, or they were there when we were at home.

On the rare occasions when mother wasn't there my big sister was left in charge. And boy howdy did she like to be in charge and take charge she would.

I remember one time we were left in her care and I guess we probably did get rowdy as we were playing because most times we did.

She threatened us with time out and this wasn't enough punishment for us. She made us sit in the corner for  thirty minutes and then she whipped us. We told her mom punished us if we misbehaved but never like this.

Finally we must have drawn her last straw because she got the help of my second oldest sister (Juanita) and tied my hands one to one leg of the piano and the other hand to the other leg, then she took my brother (Oliver) and tied one of his hands to one sofa leg and the other hand to the other sofa leg. then she tied our legs together and told us now try and get loose.

It didn't take long before Oliver realized that he could lift up the sofa and slide the knot down the leg and off and then the other leg. Then he got busy on our legs and he untied my hands and we escaped outside where we gladly stayed until our mother came home.

Palmer Waters

Watch Out What You Wish For

My second oldest sister Juanita was such fun. She could play a piano by ear and she taught me one summer how to play the piano using the black keys and I still play that way even today.

She was full of life and love to have fun. She was such a happy person to be around. She loved an adventure and she was always thinking of things that we could do.

Even after she got married we had fun going to their house and doing things together.

She could stretch a pound of ground beef into four meals. She could make you laugh so hard that you would start to cry. If an accident was going to happen it would be with her somewhere around. Almost never happening to her but to the other person.

She could sing like a bird and loved to sing parts with my sister Lucy and cousin Louise W. and her younger sister Susan. She sang alto and Lucy sang soprano and Louise sang tenor. I loved to hear them sing as a group but looking back I wish i could just hear them one more time.

Juanita always said she wanted to be young and that she never wanted to be fifty because when you got fifty you were old. Well as you can guess to all young people fifty is old, but the older you get and the closer you get to that number the younger that number looks.

She had been in a car accident when she was younger and had a broken collarbone and a concussion. And then one time when she was on an airplane and sitting by the emergency exit the door wasn't closed properly and it affected her hearing in that ear that was closest to that door.

One day she went to her doctor for a checkup and they found a lump on her head and they said that it was a brain tumor. It was the size of a walnut when they found it but in a month it was about the size of an orange.
She had planned on going to Mexico for a Special treatment but the doctors told her that it was too late for that.

I often wondered how she felt when she heard that news, but never having been in a situation like her I never knew until last year when they induced me into a coma when I had pneumonia and I thought I was going to die. You are willing for whatever they can do to make it better and give you a little more time.

I talked with her on the phone and she reminded me about how she never wanted to get old and how she never wanted to be fifty. And now she wasn't going to she was getting just what she wished for.

It wasn't many days later when we got a call that she was on a ventilator and that they were going to take her off of it and that we should come before they took her off of life support.

This was one of the saddest days of my life. Words can't express the feelings of the thought of losing a sibling that you love and have share a part of your life with.

When we got to the hospital, I was hoping for a miracle, but there she was with her head shaved and not looking anything like Juanita the sister that I loved. As they took her off of life support her heart stopped and she was gone in the blink of an eye.

It has taken me many years to get that picture out of my mind of her with her head shaved and not looking like herself at all. She always had beautiful hair and always knew just how to wear it.

I can still hear today, "Watch out what you wish for because you just might get it."

Palmer Waters

When I'm An Old Lady And Live With My Kids

When I'm an old lady, I'll live with each kid,
and bring so much happiness, just as they did.
I want to pay back all the joy they've provided.
Returning each deed! Oh, they'll be so excited!

(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids.) 
I'll write on the wall with reds, whites and blues, 
and I'll bounce on the furniture wearing my shoes. 
I'll drink from the carton and then leave it out. 
I'll stuff all the toilets and oh, how they'll shout!

(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids.)
When they're on the phone and just out of reach,
I'll get into things like sugar and bleach.
Oh, they'll snap their fingers and then shake their head,
and when that is done, I'll hide under the bed!

(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids.)
I'll sit close to the TV, I'll click through the channels,
I'll cross both eyes just to see if they stick.
I'll take off my socks and throw one away,
and play in the mud till the end of the day!

(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids.)
When they cook dinner and call me to eat,
I'll not eat my green beans or salad or meat,
I'll gag on my okra, spill milk on the table,
and when they get angry, I'll run...if I'm able!

(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids.)
And later in bed, I'll lay back and sigh,
I'll thank God in prayer and then close my eyes.
My kids will look down with a smile slowly creeping,
and say with a groan, "She's so sweet when she's sleeping!

We Didn't Have The "Green Thing" Back Then

A friend shared this article with me from where, I do not know.  It really made me think and took me back.

I remember all the non-green things we did "back then."   On the fourth of July, we didn't have AC in the house so we celebrated out under an oak tree and ate food hand-made by our mothers and grandmothers.

Fathers and Grandfathers kept an eye on the watermelons cooling in the spring that ran not too far from our oak.  And the younger were hand-cranking ice cream to go with those home-made pies and cakes later.

I don't like the way America is heading right now and I pray a time comes again when a hand shake is as good as a contract like it used to be.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained,"We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today.  Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the 'green thing’ in our day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store and we got 3 cents per Coke bottle.  The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.

So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books.  This was to ensure that public property,(the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling's.

Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building.  We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.
But she was right.  We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diaper because we didn't have the throw away kind.  We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 5000 watts/hour -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days.  

Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV if any at all, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room.  And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. 

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.  When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap (and wrapped it in brown paper bags).

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn.  We used a push mower that ran on human power.  We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.  We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen,and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the street car or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost more than twice what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.  And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. We ate our burgers at home.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to tick us off...  Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced someone who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

Thank You, for letting be blow off a little steam.

Accidents Happen

In the late 1950's and early 1960's a kid had a love for the bikes of that period. We had the two-tone bike and we had bikes that had baskets on the front to carry groceries in or just anything that we could put up there.

I had a little Chicawha dog and he loved to ride in the basket of my sisters bike. We had chrome fenders on our bikes and you could buy an accessory for the back fender to carry your books in saddle bags or put them under a chrome binder to hold a few books.

Then came the three speed bikes such as Schwinn. It didn't take long before Huffy got on the band wagon with a 3-speed bike as well as other American Bike Builders.

We rode our bikes to and from school, to the grocery for our mothers and to our friends house. We could stop off at the city Library and sit and read books in the coolness of the building on hot summer days.

We loved to ride them through the woods long before they made mountain bikes. We had trails all over the place and we had a great love for our bikes. The bikes gave us a freedom that we hadn't had before and it was something to contain us until we were old enough to drive.

Beside my dad Furniture and Appliance store was a very steep hill that dropped quickly to an alley at the back of all of the stores on that side of the street. My dad's building was three storied and it would drop that much as you rode down it. The alley was used but not a lot of traffic was there mostly trucks from the businesses and the people that owned the businesses.

Next door to my dads was a Hardware store and they were good friends of ours, next to that was a Five and Dime Store and then Rexall Drug Store with a Barber Shop in the basement the a Doctor's Office, Jewelers, And then a Bank with a drive thru in the alley.

I decided that I would take my new Schwinn that my dad had gotten me for my birthday and ride it up and down that hill. It was a breeze going down but a full stand-up climb to get back to the top. I had decided that I would ride it down one last time before riding my bike on home. When I got to the bottom I applied the brakes when I saw the New Lincoln that belonged to the lady whose husband owned the Hardware Store next door. I tried but they didn't stop me in time and I hit her right front passenger door, and flew over the car to land on the street on the other side and all of the wind was knocked out of me. As I was coming to I was thinking of how I was going to break this to my dad. Mrs. Ruffin came out of the car in a flash and was checking me all over to see if I was hurt. I wondered why she wasn't checking out her front door of her New Lincoln, but she was more concerned with me. I stood up and tried to walk around and I was still dazed. When I walked around to the other side to see the damage on the car, all there was, was a tire print and no damage. For some reason I start to smile and am glad that her car was not damaged from my bike hitting it. Then that is when I saw my bike for the first time. The shinny chrome front wheel was bent as if a strong man had twisted it in his hands.

I knew then that I wouldn't be riding my new bike for quite a while this summer. I slowly opened the sliding rear door of my dad's building and put my bike in the basement in a safe place until later. After making my apologies I walked home thinking of how I was going to tell my parents. I had decided that I would let them know as soon as possible and I would turn around and start with my dad first. I returned to the store and told my dad that I needed to talk with him. Soon he took me into his office and we set down and he asked me what was so important that I couldn't wait until we got home.

I told him about the accident and that since I was closer to the store that I thought that he needed to know first before he found out from someone else. He asked me what sort of punishment that I should get for running into someone's car and for messing up my bike. I said that I would work to pay for getting the tire mark out of her door and also to pay for my rim and tire, and that I would go next door and apologize to Mr. Ruffin for running into their car, and that if there was anything that I could do to help out around his store for thirty days I would do what ever he wanted me to do.

I went next door to say my apology and he smiled as I came in. I didn't know whether this was a god or bad thing, but I continued on. I told him what had happened and that I was sorry that it had happened and that I was willing to work for him for thirty days to defray the extra costs.

He told me to have a seat, and then he told me what had happened to him when he was a young man and what the man had told him after he apologized to him. "Sonny, you'll never know in a hundred years, have a great summer and do what little boys do when they are out of school."

He said, "I never had a little boy, but I was a little boy once and accidents happen and you became a man when you were willing to make things right and I respect this very much."

You know I enjoyed my summer very much and I never forgot what he said and that is another reason I liked Growing Up In A Small Town.