By Caprice Lawles | Contributing Writer
When I was a kid growing up in the late 1950s, a gas station was owned by a friend’s dad. The mom in the family kept order in the sunny, corner window with the counter cash register, the Coke machine, and the vinyl-upholstered, metal benches for customers. Adults sat on the benches smoking, swilling coffee they brought from home, and using the daily newspaper to help pass the time. Some read it, chatting together about alarming headlines, while others used chewed-up pencils to work the crossword puzzle or to circle classified ads for new jobs or old cars. Kids sat on the floor, reading the comics or folding discarded pages into hats. Sometimes someone would spring for nickel Cokes (in green glass bottles) for us.
Every so often, the narrow door behind the counter would open. Bits of music or news from the AM radio drifted in from the garage, where men in greasy overalls worked on cars up on hydraulic posts above them. The mixture of smells from oil, gasoline, and antifreeze was overwhelming. The place was filthy; friendly, but filthy. Every surface in the sunlit customer-waiting room was covered in the thinnest film of oil and dust.
Time was punctuated by a two-tone ring that went off each time a driver from the street pulled in for gas, the car wheels crushing the long, black, rubber hose connected to a bell. One of the mechanics would stop his work in the garage and sprint out to the pumps. They waited on customers in ways that seem out of dreams now: washing windshields and windows, checking oil, adding water to the radiator, offering to put air in tires, and fingering routes on paper maps.
Walls in gas stations were festooned with fan belts in descending sizes and plastered with advertisements warning of assorted dangers: Don’t let your battery die! or When was the last time you checked your coolant? My folks could only afford tired, old clunkers, which is why we spent so much time (and money) at the gas station/garage. Cars seemed to be iffy, rolling problems; not the shiny symbols of freedom and status Dinah Shore was singing about during the Ed Sullivan show commercials.
The owners of both the Sinclair and the Phillips ‘66 station in our neighborhood were married to sweethearts they had met in Germany during the waning months of WWII. It was not uncommon on a snowy day to see, at either station, a woman in an apron rushing in to drop off a hot lunch for her husband, then sweep the floor, wash the windows (or at least the parts she could reach) and water the geraniums she kept along the windowsills all winter. It was the last place you would think needed a flower, of all things, but the war brides saw things differently.
The affection those women had for its bright flowers against frosty glass made me a lifelong devotee of the humble, easy-to-grow geranium. Now that temperatures are falling here, it is time for me to bring my geraniums in for winter. I’ll have to cut them back quite a bit. But by January they will put on a show of bright fuchsia, red, and orange blooms.
Without saying a word, those war brides taught me how the geranium’s gaiety can mock winter skies and worrisome headlines. With each new bloom this January, I will see those women, the mechanics, the tattered posters on the walls, hear the bell signaling another sale, and see my dad chatting with another dad about engines and headlines. Maybe I’ll drink a cold Coca-Cola from a glass bottle to celebrate. The universe will be spinning, as Steinbeck said, in greased grooves.
Caprice Lawless has written extensively on higher education, homesharing, technology, construction, and engineering. She moved to Oregon from Colorado in 2023, shortly after retiring from teaching college English and Journalism.
