LITTLE ROCK — What do you associate with home delivery of milk, an ashtray at your work desk, the sainted American sports star, a bow-tied gasoline “jockey” at the filling station? Why, a happier America, of course.
It’s gone now.
Got milk?
Get it yourself.
Light up at work?
Human resources says you can’t even smoke outside work.
Sports heroes?
Even our best bicyclist is a cheater.
Now our filling stations have us outside in the cold, breathing fumes, leaning across the grimy hood to work the squeegee, and finally, dribbling gas on our wingtips as we replace the nozzle. Receipt Yes/No?
Yeah, whatever.
Out of paper - please see cashier for receipt.
FROM FULL-SERVICE TO STRICTLY SERVICE
Down in Benton, 65-year-old James Posey runs a simple service station - fluids, filters, hoses, belts, tires, wires, lights, brakes. No gasoline, which is noteworthy since the shop is a spinoff of the full-service gasoline station he used to have at 300 N. Main St. across from the courthouse.
About 10 or 12 years ago he gave up the gas side of the operation when his lease was up.
“I didn’t make enough selling gas to pay” the lease, he says. “I was making three cents on a gallon.”
Now, he says, it’s all maintenance and repair work, and it’s good. Service was always Posey’s trade. Even folks in the capital city are familiar with Posey’s genial service down in Saline County - not that they’re making a special outing for a quick tire check or washer fluid top-off.
“Yes, sir, they come in here.”
What’s the damage?
“No charge. We don’t mind. It’s just part of business. I mean, people are great, sir. You gotta treat them great, without them you got no reason to be in business.”
There’s a sentiment we can associate with a happier America.
Another decades-old gas station, Bud Dent’s Texaco up in Jonesboro, ceased filling its own tanks more recently,about three years ago. It was the last of its kind in Jonesboro - a full-service filler - and now, when owner-operator Gary Kifer (son-in-law of Dent) thinks about the business, he wistfully speculates about the better value his corner of West Washington a block off Union would have for some high-volume lawyer who’d be within walking distance of the county and federal courthouses. “It’s an attorney’s dream.”
Kifer says the modern filling station arose out of the big oil companies’ need not only to bring their product to market but brand it, too. Texaco, Gulf, Pennzoil, Esso and others often treated the stations like showroom floors, offering incentives for upkeep: paint, signage, even equipment. Some time ago Big Oil relinquished the retail side, leaving a void filled by the distributors of gasoline - the haulers - and more recently, grocers like Kroger and Wal-Mart and convenience stores like Kum & Go and E-Z Mart.
“It got to where, my last three years I sold gas, you buy a transport load anywhere from 8,700-8,900 gallons, [and] the price of fuel’s close to $30,000 a transport load. Problem was, me being an independent and getting my fuel through [a supplier], you wouldn’t get any cut on it. You’d be spending $30,000 for a load of gas, and I could drive across town and sometimes buy it as cheap as I paid for it by the load, and that just kinda burns your a++, know what I mean?”
FILL ’ER UP
Now “fill ’er up” - there’s a colloquialism that’s as antiquated today as “jeepers creepers” or “goin’ steady.”
But at the Shell station in the Heights neighborhood of Little Rock, stop in and say it to Landon Garrett or owner operator Charles Turney, then turn down the oldies radio station and catch a little catnap. Just be prepared to drop whatever the pump turns up: it’s 45 cents more per gallon for full-service.
Full-service means a tank of gas, a pressure check of all four tires according to the specs labeled inside the door frame (and even the mounted one in the case of an SUV), a check of all the fluids and spot-inspection of the belts, a four-sided window wash - I’ve seen Turney go around the window’s edges with a buffing cloth - and a free topping off of the windshield wiper fluid.
Neither Garrett nor Turney wear uniforms - certainly no bow tie or starchy white garrison cap - and of the two pumping islands, the far more frequented is the street side self-service pumps. Small signs denote each, but cluttering up the full-service island are jugs of antifreeze and washer fluid,funnels jammed one inside another, an old milk crate filled with quarts of oil and topped by a tangle of jumper cables. There’s a coil of hose hung on one side of the pump and a rack of shiny yellow Anco wiper blades on the other.
Still, only about one in five gas customers stops at the inside pumps, “and even then we’ll get some people who pull up and they’re surprised because they’re not prepared for full service,” Turney says.
Of those who get the full treatment, the great majority are older women. Many of the rest are folks who normally buy gas elsewhere, but need a tire inflated or fluids checked.
“This is the best. Goldstars,” says one of the regulars, a middle-aged Heights woman who didn’t give her name. “And a lot of people I know come here. My parents came here. I knew this place from before I could drive.”
Kifer in Jonesboro says his full-service business was loaded with older women who’ve “never pumped a drop of gas in their lives,” and they “were begging me ‘Don’t quit selling gas!’”
But here’s another side of the story that illustrates his own decision to quit gasoline.
“There was a lady; she’s not here anymore. Ms. Sloan.
“This lady, I mean, they own farms and farms in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas. She don’t even know what she’s worth.”
She often complained to Kifer about the cost of fuel at his station.
“I just laughed. I said, ‘Ms. Sloan, there’s a self-service station right around the corner.’ I said, ‘When you go down there, do they come out and check your tires, check your oil, clean your windshield?’
“She said, ‘No, I don’t stop in there. I don’t know how to pump gas.’ She said, ‘But their prices are a lot lower than yours.’
“I said, ‘That’s because they don’t do anything but take your money.’
“Hey, the next time she came in, she’d ask me the same question” - how come the price of gas is so high? - “Every time, not one time.”
Style, Pages 21 on 01/22/2013