Pumping Gas

The Spring and Summer before I went to school at UVA I worked at a gas station, the Hess station at Bailey's Crossroads. It seemed like the ideal job for me because I could still study and I thought pumping gas would not be very demanding, intellectually, so it looked like a good fit. I drove by and saw the "Hiring" sign, walked in and talked to Don, he was the owner.

"So what are you doin'?" Don was from Arkansas, that was his interview method. I remember later he trotted out his high school yearbook and he showed me a picture, it was a picture of Johnny Cash. They went to the same high school, they were even in the same grade. "Well that's my claim to fame," he said. But that was later, right now he wanted to know what I was doin. I told him I was going to be attending UVA in the fall, hopefully, and right now I was still taking classes at NOVA and also at George Mason University. He said, "Well you're not gonna get rich here. I'll pay you five dollars an hour." That seemed fine so I filled out a simple form and that was it. He made an off color joke about NOVA, since there were so many foreigners there. I liked the foreigners. I think he sensed that, because I didn't laugh too much at his joke. A real southerner from his generation loves to tell a good joke and he loves to get "applause". I was not clapping. We had our understanding.

It was 1987. As it turned out, after April became May I found out I had made it in to UVA. It was good news; I had also made it in to Va Tech but I did not entertain that. I would be going down to Charlottesville. But in the meantime I had things to do, like work and study. I got my first "B", in Astronomy, at George Mason. It was a bit of a shock to my system, even though I had already been accepted, this was my first grade less than an "A". Damn. I had spent the last two years with my nose in a book all the time, I took a page from the immigrants.

They drove cabs or something and studied a lot. They didn't do anything else. That seemed like a good idea, so I did pretty much the same. There were Ethiopians, Vietnamese, Somalians, Malaysians, people from all over the world, and they were the majority. There were some white Americans at NOVA, like most white Americans at Junior College they were just screwing around, killing time, wasting their parents' money, waiting to be kicked out of the basement. Sometimes they would come up to me when I was studying, "Hey do you party?" No, I didn't party, not with them especially. Anyway, what was there to celebrate? We hadn't accomplished anything, that was why we were at NOVA. I would party when I had done something worth it. I didn't do much except ride the bike trail to Mount Vernon and back, 20 miles, six days a week. I was in good shape then.

So I was done with classes in the Spring and I had the Summer to goof off until it was time to go to real school. I worked with the usual bunch that would work at a gas station. Back then no one stood behind the bulletproof glass, we kept all our paper money neatly folded in our top left pockets on our shirts and we had coin changers on our belts, the kind with four cylinders. We were walking cash registers. We walked from pump to pump collecting money and giving change. You had to do the math in your head. If you couldn't do the math in your head, you couldn't work. And you had to keep your money very straight, twenties folded this way, tens that, ones the other, in such an order and only that order. Those were the rules.

There was a McDonald's right next door and Don laid the rule down hard: No parking on the lot if you don't buy gas. He made it clear he wasn't running a parking lot for McDonald's. So I had to go balls up a few times and throw guys off the lot. One time they were black guys, they called me a redneck and a cracker. I said they had to move, off the lot. I just stood and did not move and did not say anything further. They left. One guy I asked to leave, he wound up offering me a job climbing trees, chopping branches or something. I declined, politely. I was learning to be couth and not curse, I was discarding all the coarse language I had learned was "normal" growing up in Los Angeles. I still kept it handy, but I tried to use it only when it was truly needed.

Everyone needs gasoline. That is, if they drive a car. As a result, I ran into the broadest section of society, from bottom to top. Barely functioning cars would pull into the full servie aisle, they would ask for 2$ of gas. It was a huge markup in full service, since we pumped it and they would not have to get out of the car. So they got hardly any gas for their 2$, but they got to stay in their car. On the other hand, wealthy persons with nice cars used to pull up and very carefully pump their own gas. They used the lowest octane and they paid the least amount, and they were very careful about it.

After a while I lost all respect for cars, as things that might be attractive or somehow meaningful. They were just pieces of metal and either the customer or I kept putting fuel into them and they kept burning it, so what was the difference? There was not any, the only thing a car can really do, really do, is move you around. The rest is bullshit.

There were gypsies that used to come in and get gas. I was told they lived nearby, and that they were dangerous. I studied them, I would never have known they were gypsies. They were swarthy but they didn't have accents, they drove older models, Buicks and Caddilacs. They were not imposing physically, they were dissheveled, and overweight. I never saw the women or children, just the men, and they always came in groups of three in a car, no more or less. Anyway I had no problem with the gypsies. What bothered me were the yuppies, this was the 1980s after all, and they were all over.

We took cash or a personal check, no credit cards, nothing else. Every now and then someone would pull in and fill up then show some piece of plastic to me. Don's rule was, get some collateral, make the guy go get some cash. Some people didn't have much, but I always got something from them, and they always paid me back. It was in my interest to collect, because if I was short on the money it came out of my check. Sometimes all I could get out of them was a cooler. I tried to pick something that meant something to them, that way they would come back and pay me. One time I took a guy's watch, it was a nice one too. He came right back.

Don had a surveillance system set up for the night shift, to keep an eye on us. We figured out how to get around it by setting up a tape player, a box as we called it, in a certain corner of the office that the camera only swept by about once every thirty seconds. Other than that one moment, we could do whatever we wanted. We hid beers behind the box and drank them at night, waiting to get off work. It was a hot summer. We played Jonathan Richman and the Violent Femmes and we played them loud, too.

One night a Ferarri pulled up, a convertible. People that drove convertibles, as I measured it, were generally assholes. This Ferrari pulled up to the regular pumps, self serve. There was a guy and a girl in there and the guy asked my fellow worker, Lew, to pump the gas for him. Now Lew was from the coal country of Pennsylvania. He did not put up with anything. One time some kids got some candy out of a machine and dropped a wrapper on the ground. "Pick that shit up you little sumbitch do you think this place is a trash can?" he said. The kids' eyes bugged out and they called him sir and apologized. He used to drink a lot of Jack Daniels, Lew did, and he got into a lot of fights, especially at night.

So on this particular night, even though it was 1987, you could just tell this was not a good time or place for the yuppie man to say what he said to Lew, but he did it. "Hey pump me full man," he had champagne in a fluted glass and so did his date, they were dressed very well. Lew and I were in our Hess uniforms, on either side of the car. The guy held out a twenty and I grabbed it. Lew said, "Listen I'm gonna go take me a leak, right over there, take some pressure off my brain, ok?" The man and woman were silent and their eyes changed. "I'm gonna come back when I'm drained, you had best both be gone or I will pull you both out of there. Now excuse me." And sure enough he went over and took a leak on the bathroom door. The yuppie man said, "Oh, your friend should learn some manners! That is not customer service!" I did not say anything. I just smiled. Off they went, the guy didn't even ask for his money. And they didn't get any gas.

Eventually Lew's string ran out. He got into a motorcycle accident. It didn't kill him, but he coudn't work anymore. He had a lot of trouble walking. God damned motorcyles. I think he went back to Pennsylvania.

Sometimes men would come by to visit with Don, they were Union guys from the railroad. "What y'all need is something to stir the air in here," they would say. Then they would go in the back and discuss things that I did not know about.

Toward the end of the summer I started closing. That meant working the last two hours by yourself. It saved Don a couple of bucks in labor cost but sometimes I think he did that just to see if we could take the heat of handling all three aisles, including the full service aisle, and making our drops without screwing up. Don had been a drill instructor in the air force. He liked to test us.

I remember my very last night working there, I had given notice and all of that of course, and I was on the phone, on the inside, to my girlfriend, Barbara Jean. I sure hope she is happily married now, I really don't know. I had lots of girlfriends that summer. I looked pretty good. The black girls even told me so, "Oh well don't you look fine in your white uniform!"

I was on the phone with Barbara Jean, in the office, and I was alone closing the last shift, I had gotten pretty good at closing and being in charge of three islands, potentially 12 cars, four of them full service, and kept dropping my 20s into the safe, always drop your 20s into the safe that way they won't kill you if they come to rob you. It was late at night. I got distracted, I told Barbara Jean I would be back, I went out to collect the money but damn I locked myself out, I forgot about the self locking door and my keys were inside.

Now I had no keys and I couldn't drop the 20s, and I couldn't get new change from the safe. Damn. People kept arriving, it was a Friday night. I improvised, I asked them all to exchange money, I explained it was my last night. Retail business is cyclical, anyone can tell you that, so after a bit it slowed and no one was around so I went to work on the hinges of the door with a pipe. That was doing no good. I got an idea and ran across Leesburg Pike to a hotel lobby, there was a payphone in there. I got on the payphone, I called up the only guy I knew who had keys, Steve! he was a heroin addict and his father was a preacher, but somehow he was still able to live at home, I guess he was about my age then. I used to drive him to the methadone clinic in Old Town so I figured he owed me one. He took his time answering and he was very slurred, I said please just get your Dad to drive up here and give me a key, I am locked out. Steve said he would try but no guarantee, his dad was asleep. I started to think I might just have to keep the place open all night, until Don came in the morning. He would be pissed if that happened.

In the meantime, there were cars across the street, the drivers were milling about like zombies, rendered undead by my absence. I sprinted back across Leesburg Pike in my white uniform drenched in the humid air, and I started to collect. "You are lucky I am honest son" "Why did you leave your post?" "What in hell are you doin over there at that hotel, gettin' some tail?", they said. Somehow I collected all the money. I had nowhere to drop it and it was hell making the various change. Some of them I had to give notes to saying I would pay them, with my phone number. I was really sweating hard.

Around closing time both the Alexandria Police and Steve and his Dad pulled up. They lumbered out of their vehicles in a similar fashion, which I thought was odd. The cops came because Barbara Jean's last memory of my voice was "Oh crap!" and then some cursing and then silence, so she thought I was dead. Steve gave me the key. I unlocked the door and got eveyrthing squared away.

It had been a long hot August night. I called Barbara Jean and told her I wasn't dead. I went down the hill to Friday's and I had some drinks, they were cold and they tasted really good. I made it through, I even came up OK on my money so Don didn't have to dock my last check--I went around and visited some people who had called me up from the chits I had given them. It all worked out.

It was quite a time, yeah it was. It was like summer camp. That gas station is still there now but it is not at all the same. Don sold it a long time ago, maybe to the yuppie guy who drove off from Lew and myself, minus his twenty dollars. There is one employee behind the glass, where the office used to be, and the employee looks bored, he hardly has anything to do. He doesn't have to get collateral, the system doesn't work that way anymore. He doesn't have to throw anyone off the lot, he just calls 911 from behind the glass. It is probably hard for him to curse anyone out properly from behind there. Everything is digital, sanitized, streamlined and efficient. They take credit cards, debit cards, and there is no full service island. The house the gyspies lived in was demolished a while ago.

The other day, I stopped there to get gas and look around, even though it was out of my way. I swiped my card and filled her up. Well, it's progress I guess. But I heard that thought, bouncing in my brainpan, as I screwed the gas cap back on. And I didn't like the way it sounded in my head, bouncing around. Progress. I took an old wrapper from my car and threw it on the ground. No one said, or did, anything; a breeze came and stirred the wrapper a bit, and then it did not make its way further, stranded and stuck as it was on the apron.