Les’s Station Part Two

 I spent a lot of my time putting cars and trucks on a hydraulic lift and then removing the wheels so Les and Morris could do the brake work on the vehicles. The older Chrysler models had right hand threaded studs on one side of the car and left hand threads on the other side. The idea was that that way the wheel lugs would always tighten on both sides rather than potentially loosen on one side. That made it difficult to loosen them to work on the car. Sometimes it was all I could do to loosen them. Les taught me to spin the wheel one way and then snap the lug wrench the opposite way to tighten them down after the brakes were repaired. That last snap would squeak like a banshee, but that told him that the wheel lugs were tight and he didn’t have to worry that some customer’s wheel would fall off while he was driving down the road. He would listen for that squeak every time.

Les charged a dollar to lubricate a car and in those days it took more than an hour to properly lube a car. There were grease fittings all over cars then, some even on the universal joints, front and rear. I had to remove the plug on the differential and stick my finger in to see if there was enough 90 weight oil in there. It was sometimes difficult to break that plug loose. Most cars back then were standard shift, so the transmission had a plug on its side under the car that had to be broken loose and another finger went in there to check for the 90 weight oil used there. Either place was ok if your finger could go in and touch oil. Changing oil filters wasn’t as easy as it is today. Cars then had cartridge filters under a steel case with a large bolt on the end. Many times there was hardly any room to loosen that bolt without hitting the exhaust manifold pipe and burning a hand or some suspension component and busting a knuckle. But I loved it. I had the inkling that I wanted to be a mechanic and this would be my apprenticeship.

It was at Les’s station that the Navy recruiter showed up one afternoon and asked me if I wanted to work in a gas station the rest of my life.

I answered: “I think so.”

He replied: “This is all right for now, and would be for the rest of your life if that’s what you want, but I can get you a nice job in the Navy, something clean and nice for you to work on, like electronics.” The irony was that while working on electronic equipment in airplanes wasn’t quite as dirty as working on engines, but it was closer than one would think. I’m not sure how much later it was when I joined the Navy, but there was a lot of water under the bridge between the day I first spoke to the recruiter and the day I signed up on September 4, 1963.

I had my first experience cleaning toilets at Les’s station. Cleaning a toilet is never fun, but cleaning one that is in public domain is worse than one at home. Les would always call me to clean the toilet when he had to use it. I of course was not happy about that but he assured me it was good for me to clean a toilet because a little urine on my hands would make a man out of me. I don’t know if that’s actually true but Les believed it or so he said. Les had a beautiful home, but he shaved and did his business in the toilet at work.

The station did repair work and there was a stock of parts there that went back to the 1920’s. Most of the business was brake and front end work which was done by Morris, the mechanic, but Les could do it, he just had help so he avoided mechanic work if possible. Morris was a funny guy; he used to keep his beer in the Coca-Cola machine and would have a cool beer on a hot afternoon. He showed me how to get into the cola machine and saved me a lot of dimes. I was only making a dollar an hour so I was happy to be saving the cost of Coca-Colas. Les knew when I started getting free colas because the change in the machine dropped off. He didn’t mind, but he wasn’t ever going to show me how to do it myself.

I had an old 1955 Studebaker I drove at that time and the radiator hose broke. Auto parts stores had no parts for Studebakers so I asked Les what to do. He went picking through those old parts from the twenties and thirties he had and matched one up for me. He gave me the hose because he had no idea what it had cost him. I traded the old Studebaker for a beautiful looking junk pile in the form of a 1957 Mercury, its brakes soon failed and Les rebuilt the entire system for me at no charge.

I was in Catholic High School when I worked there and Les was a fallen Catholic. He questioned his faith, like many men in their fifties, especially after his wife had been beaten and robbed in their own home before they moved out to the new house. Les would tip a few beers in the hot, late afternoons, sometimes during cold winter afternoons too and then he would question me about matters of faith. I was a good student of religion and had all the up to date ready answers, so we would talk on into the late evenings with him questioning and me answering. I will never know for sure, but it must have helped him because he often asked me about matters of faith. Besides being a good employer, Les was a good friend and in many ways a good mentor.

I lost track of all the times Les would fire me after an afternoon and evening of his drinking and then questioning me about religion. He would always call the next afternoon and rehire me, unless he forgot doing the deed, then it might take a week before he called.