Recently I cleaned the windshield on our vehicle while filling it with fuel; it brought to mind my summer job as a gas station attendant in Lansing.  It was located on Kalamazoo street, between Cedar and Larch, right where the Wendy’s restaurant is now.

This was after my sophomore year at MSU, and I stayed in town to attend the Summer Training Program run by University Reformed Church.  College students would work during the day (or late at night) and attend a variety of classes and training sessions in the evenings and on the weekends. Interestingly, a similar ministry has been in place the last several years, but all the students are in Petoskey and it is now a Project rather than a Program.

Joe and I both landed daytime jobs at this Gulf gas station, along with another fellow who worked the night shift.  Joe was attending Michigan Tech, but transferred to MSU after that summer.  He became a good friend and was in the wedding party when Diane and I were married – he was one of the ones who ALMOST fainted.

I learned a few things from our enthusiastic boss Dave, who was manager for several stations around town.  The station did not provide any maintenance work so our lessons were mainly about providing good service when pumping the petrol. “When cleaning a windshield, wipe the squeegee off after every pass over the glass.” “Don’t open a radiator cap until it has cooled off.”  “Be ready to change the price because you have to move quick when all the other stations make a switch.” And Dave had an interesting habit of calling everyone Sweetcakes.  This was briefly very funny when the night guy thought he was saying Suitcase.

There were two kinds of gas, regular and ethyl.  Most cars used regular (or reg-lah, as the boss called it).  As I recall, the price per gallon ranged from nineteen to forty-one cents.  Most people paid cash, although a few had credit cards.  No computers yet. Credit purchases were recorded with the sliding mechanical bar that copied the embossed parts of the card to a two-part form; the cash register was electrical but not too smart. At the end of the shift (and when the price changed) you needed to note the number of gallons delivered, calculate the amount of money you should have (including receipts for  wide range of car-related novelties sold) and then hope to come close with the amount of money on hand.

During the slow times Joe and I played a marvelous game:  we each had magic gun fingers and would shoot at each other with imaginary bullets from our magic guns.  The noises were very authentic – pow, bang, ping, and the occasional KA-Pow.  The best part was evading the other guy’s shot.  Twisting, darting, convoluting; no bullet was quick enough to land and no one was hurt.  “Missed!”   That was the fun part of the job.  The hard parts were the con artist, the robbery, and the burns from the exploding radiator, but those are stories for another day.