Dime's worth of gas won't take you home no more

  These two sentinels of a bygone era were seen in a quaint New England town. (Wikimedia photo)

                                                             By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

While on the way to drop off the daughter's laptop at the computer store for repair Tuesday I stopped at a neighborhood convenience store for gasoline. With the new pumps now you just activate them with a debit card, pump your gas, then wait on the receipt. In Life's fast lane, it's called minimum human contact. El Jif.fy-o! But to us as a people, gaining it has been costly. We've lost something dearly in social glue along the way, I'd dare venture.

Now this particular pump must've been fresh out of paper; it didn't spit out a receipt. So I had to go inside and actually make face-to-face contact with a cashier to get one. No. 12, I told her. Forty dollars worth is what I usually get when running low. It's somewhat of a habit. (Another story) Took the receipt and left without saying anything else to anyone. Not even an eye contact.

When I got back into the pickup and turned the key on, naturally I wanted to see how far I'd moved the needle. Pumping gasoline and playing football in Life use to be a lot alike--the point was not necessarily to hit pay dirt on the next play but to “move the chains”; advance the 1^st and 10 marker. Breath easier with a new set of downs. Stopping for gas meant first and 10 and Yippee-aye yaye. Yippee-i-ooo... And maybe in that regard it still does.

Bu soon as I saw the needle stop just short of three-fourths of a tank mark though I quickly did a little double-take, and grabbed the receipt I'd tossed on the dashboard to read the number of gallons on it. Like most of us retired baby boomers now, indeed I live with one leg stuck in the past and another one squishing in the present. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't get easier.

Holy shit! I muttered. Only 11 ½ gallons!

And that, of course, brought back childhood memories of growing up in Cleburne, TX, in the 1950s during “gas wars” and listening to Marshall Edwards at Edwards' Texaco on North Main Street tell some of his wonderful stories.

Gosh I miss those ol' original convenience stores sometimes. Go in to a neighborhood store for a howdee-you-do, to catch up on the gossip, and to buy staples for the pantry. Gas was optional. And all of it only cost a signature on a ticket. Dad would be in in a week or so later to settle the difference.

In the mid-50s at one time I remember gasoline was 14.9 cents at Marshall's Texaco store in Cleburne. Clearly, clearly, not the stress we live under today.

One of the stories he told my parents once was something that happened not at his store but at a fellow dealer's service station over on East Henderson. I want to say the one that use to be on the corner of Brazos there that always stayed open 'til 11or so. That's where the high school boys would often get their gas after coming out from the Esquire Theater, and before going parking.

This particular older man guided his car in “on fumes,” of course, Marshall relayed, and asked for a dime's worth of gasoline. The attendant had never sold 10 cents of gasoline to anyone before. But he quickly hit the pump trigger a couple-three times to get 10 cents, replaced the gas cap and went to the driver's window to get the money.

“Dime's worth of gas ain't going to get you very far, you know that mister!” he said, paraphrasing of course.

The old man in the car smiled up at him with the prettiest row of white teeth and said, “No, but it'll get me home, son. That's all I want.”

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