Pump Gas

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

Pumping gas was my all time favorite job. People would come in, I would give them the red carpet treatment and, invariably happy they would leave. A week later they’d come back and we’d do it all again. I made people happy by giving them something simple and good in a complicated world. What could be better than that? And my co-workers were characters who I loved and had a lot of fun with on and off the job.

This was a Texaco station in the north country of New Hampshire in the early 1980’s. Full service stations were quickly becoming a thing of the past and this was one of the last holdouts. I was the guy in the olive green Texaco uniform (they never could get me to wear the hat) who would come running out, “fill’er up?” And I would always ask if I could check the oil. The station had a policy if I failed to ask the customer to check the oil, they got a free quart. In my year working there I gave away two quarts. On these momentous occasions the rest of the crew would give me a good roasting. We roasted one another whenever we had the chance.

Of the hundreds of customers I served quite a few stay in my memory. The same bunch of college kids crammed into the same beat up car would roll in and ask for some odd amount of gas, “we’d like $3.64 worth please.” Gasoline had only recently gone over a dollar in price and the pumps couldn’t be set for anything over 99¢. We would set the pumps for half the current price. Then, in this case I put and indicated $1.82 in the car and of course asked if I could check the oil. Nope, no oil, and then the driver would hand me a large plastic cup filled with change most of which was pennies. I stood there and looked at it and then him. “There’s $3.64 in here?”

“Yup.”

“Ok…” and off they’d go. I went inside and counted out the coins and there was $3.64 worth. This was their routine and there was always the amount of money in the cup they’d claimed.

A woman driving a VW Rabbit would come in. It’s never a good sign when a car sounds like a diesel but isn’t. “Can I check the oil?”

“Yes please.” Her smile was faint.

I was scared of what I would find under the hood. I checked the oil. There wasn’t any on the dipstick. I would put in a quart. Still none on the dipstick. I would put in another. It just started to show on the very end of the dipstick. I would put in another and then a little extra and it would be full. That’s three and a half quarts in an engine that held four. I explained to her running an engine with so little oil was really bad for it. She would look a little sheepish and thank me. A month later she would come back, same routine. I suggested if she wanted to stop by more frequently I’d be happy to just check the oil and top it up but she never did. I felt sorry for that little car.

In the dead of winter, four extremely well coiffed people showed up in a Rolls Royce with Quebec plates. For them, if it warmed up to anything above zero probably felt like the tropics. After filling it up I asked the dignified looking man behind the wheel if he would like me to check the oil. He smiled and said yes. When the hood “popped,” it didn’t so much pop as open like the door to a bank vault. I searched in vain among all manner of beautifully finished machinery for the dipstick. One of my most embarrassing moments in life was to tell the man I couldn’t find the dipstick. He was very gracious. “It’s probably fine. Please don’t worry about it.” I closed the hood, “ka-thunk… click.” He gave me a $5.00 tip. They whispered away.

A local guy who had a logging business would come by in his logging truck when it was stacked to the gills with logs. It was probably twelve feet high and weighed God only knew how many tons. I think he just liked to drive the fully loaded truck through town. There were a number of small raised man-hole type covers in the pavement near the pumps for access to the underground tanks. He would arrive and ever so slowly wheel the truck around the lot, it would creak and groan and rock over the covers with its towering load swaying and I would stand there only a few feet away. He’d hop out of the cab all grins and full of life and got a kick out of it when I asked if I could check the oil… it was kind of a pun as the fuel the truck burned, diesel, is technically oil.

And the guy driving an Olds Toronado from Oklahoma, wearing dress western suits who would always just miss my foot when he spit out his tobacco juice… and the very proper and tweedy woman from Beacon Hill (not Boston) in the diesel Mercedes who couldn’t figure out where I was from because I had no accent…

And then there was the crew. Bless their hearts. Owner’s Mac and Louise, Delbert the book keeper, Robert aka Wawbat and Hollis the truck drivers and Dave the technician. If any one us sensed an impending dull moment we’d quickly create trouble. Delbert was getting along in years and might once in a while leave work early. We’d then sneak the extra key to his top desk drawer out of the lock box, open the drawer and spread out a Playboy centerfold, and button it back up. The next morning Delbert would come in, putter around and get himself set up… open the drawer which he thought was secure and WHOA! Hel-Looo… Miss October! The old guy nearly had a heart attack.

One blistering hot afternoon I was tired and headed home. Wawbat and Dave got after me, “C’mon Flash, how bout we go to the Down Under for a cold one?”

“No thanks, guys, I’m whooped.”

“So we’re not good enough company for a college boy, that it?”

After going around and round I got out of the place and started walking down Main Street towards my apartment. All of a sudden my feet were off the ground. It was Wawbat and Dave, they’d snuck up behind me, grabbed my arms and hoisted me up. “Flash… we’re going for a beer! Just one!” Creating quite a stir they carried me, feet dangling in the air down the street and into the pub and set me on a bar stool. I knew “one” meant just about any number greater then one, but the coolness of the pub, the coldness of the beer(s), and sitting there telling stories with my buds… it turned out a heck of a lot better than just going home.

Hornpout, pronounced “hawnpout” is the local name for small catfish found in the ponds and lakes in the area. Hornpouting, pronounced “hawnpoutin” is the activity of catching these fish, which is always… an adventure. Later that summer, “Flash, you wanna go hawnpoutin with me an Dave tonight?”

“Is this anything like going for a beer?”

“Aw, Flash… no. But you know how to swim dontcha?” Wawbat had an evil grin.

“Well yes Wawbat, I’d be tickled to go.” This made old Wawbat’s day.

Dave and his wife and two kids had a little place off in the woods, and further off from there was a pond. Wawbat would pick me up at about seven and we’d head for Dave’s. Hawnpoutin is done in the dark. We got on our way and met at Dave’s, and gathered up our equipment: six fishing poles, two coffee cans of night crawlers, two empty 5 gallon mud buckets for all the fish we’d catch and a cooler for the beer and a couple of pints of Southern Comfort. And various other bits and pieces. We trudged through the woods in the failing light. With our hands full the mosquitoes were doing a number on us. Dave assured me it wouldn’t be so bad out on the water. We found the boat, a ten foot flat bottom pram that’d been stamped out of beer cans with oars, but no life preservers.

“You fall in, any fool would know you start swimmin for shore.”

Now Wawbat and Dave were both really big guys. I’m small so they put me in the middle. This also meant I’d do the rowing, and we slithered out of harbor and into the ink of night. Flashlights?

“Nope, dontchu worry, moon’l be up soon.’

“There’s no moon tonight.”

“Oh. Guess it’s gonna be dark then.”

First order of business was to have a beer. Then bait the hooks. You pinch the madly writhing crawlers into pieces and get each piece onto a hook without stabbing yourself, and then you let the lines go overboard and let the hooks sink to the bottom. Then you wait.

“Flash. You’re the college boy. What’s difference between a loyah an a hawnpout?”

“Wawbat, I don’t know.”

“One ofums a bottom feedin scum suckah and the otha’s A FISH!”

And so we started, three guys crammed into a tiny little boat out in the middle of a pond in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. Try as we might, the lines would get tangled and we’d get ourselves tangled, and it was dark. Really dark. And we made snide remarks and laugh and we’d catch hawnpout. At some point, not knowing what else to do, you reel in your lines and on the end would be hanging one of these slimy little fish looking like evolution skipped over them completely. They’d wiggle around a little bit and you had to be careful how you grabbed them. The leading edge of the dorsal fin had a mean spine of a stinger that you did not want to get poked with. So you grab the wiggling slippery thing in the dark without getting stung and pull the hook out. If the fish took the bait deep in it’s mouth you’d need to use needle nose pliers with your hands all slippery and try and not drop them. Things dropped into the bottom of the boat were as good as overboard.

“Wish th’ moon’d come up.”

“Won’t for two weeks, dumb-ass.”

“Aw now there’s no need gettin’ ugly about it…”

And before we knew it we were drunk and having a roaring good time out there on the water, and the mud buckets were filling up with hawnpout. About one in the morning we headed in. It was pitch black dark. We crashed through the woods with all our junk, or most of it and the mosquitoes took their share of us. Considering our blood alcohol content, it must have been a special treat. I ended up with both buckets of fish.

“Flash, doan you trip and drop them buckets.”

Ten gallons of hawnpout slithering around in the woods in the dark would’ve been a mess. “No Dave I wouldn’t think of it…”

And we got back to Dave’s cabin and Wawbat showed me how to clean hawnpout so you end up with head and skin and guts in one hand over there, and a cleaned fish in the other over here. “You cut their neck like so, cut off the back fin, stick your thumb in here and your finger here and pull. There you go.” I cleaned a lot of hawnpout. Wawbat made a fire in the stove, and dredged the fish in corn meal and fried up a mess in a skillet full of lard so hot it was about to burst into flames. Dave went out in the garden and came back with ears of corn and beets and beet greens that he got cooking and the three of us sat at the table and had a feast until nearly sun rise. Brothers.

There were somewhat more civilized gatherings at Louise and Mac’s. They had a nice place out of town and all of us would converge on them with families and all and we’d have great cook outs. Big fields spread out back towards the Baker River snaking it’s way through a broad valley nestled snug in the rock ribbed hills.

We’d frequently shoot trap out back, and there would be some fooling around. The shells used for trap are called “dove and quail load.” They’re low power and relatively inexpensive. So you’d put two of these shells in your shotgun, get ready and yell “pull!” They guy operating the sling would let it fly and off would go one or two clay “pigeons,” like small Frisbees that burst into pieces when you hit them. And we’d all get shooting and having fun and if you weren’t paying attention someone would pass you two shells to reload with and you wouldn’t notice they were duck load. Duck loads are many times more powerful than dove and quail. And you’d yell pull! and out would go the pigeon and you’d settle the stock of the shotgun into your shoulder and lead it just a bit and pull the trigger and KER-POWWW! Your gun had instantly turned into a hand held cannon that kicked like a mule and you’d exclaim, “What the hell???” And your buddies would snicker and hoot and try to look innocent. And then we’d have steaks on the grill and all sorts of other goodies and just have the best times hanging out late into the night telling stories of life and times.

When I left the Texaco, Louise and Mac and their daughter whose name escapes me had me out for dinner and we had gin and tonics and grilled swordfish steaks and salads and homemade peach pie for dessert. It was just the four of us, and their going away present to me. We sat on the back deck looking out over the fields. The long north country twilight slipped from the sky, the stars came out. It was as sweet a time as it gets and hard to say goodbye.

Gordon Bunker