All Pumped Up

All Pumped Up

Ted and Ethel, a recently married couple in their fifties were driving down a long, infrequently travelled country road. He was telling her stories about his memories of driving this route in his first car when he still lived in the small town that was a few more miles down the highway.

“There is the old gas station not far from here where I used to work as a gas jockey. I haven’t seen anyone working at that job in years. I hate being forced to obey the dictatorial commands of the computerized gas pumps. We need gas jockeys now more than we ever did when you didn’t need to learn much to pump gas. I know that you’ve heard this particular rant a few times now, but thinking about those days brings back memories of simpler gas station times.”

Ethel felt essentially the same way. So she did not really mind hearing him spew his views one more time on a subject dear to him. And she wanted to see the place where Ted had had his first job, long before they had ever met each other. He had told her many stories of the good times that he had there as a gas jockey, and how he learned to talk freely to strangers. It helped him become a successful businessman

She looked down the road, saw what she was looking for, and yelled out ‘there it is.’  He reacted with a big smile on his face, and by stepping on the gas, he was that excited. She held onto each side of her seat.

As they pulled into the station, he headed straight towards one of the two pumps nearest to the road. He didn’t want to fuel up beside the dirty white car that was parked beside one of the pumps nearest to the station. He was something of a fanatic about having a clean car, washing his more often than he took a bath or a shower, or so it seemed to Ethel.  He remarked to her that the driver of the car was so irresponsible about car cleanliness, that the numbers on the license plates could not be read.

This negative thought was soon driven out of Jeff’s mind when a young man standing by the pump greeted them. Decades ago it would have been him. When Jeff rolled down the window, he was asked whether he wanted the young man to ‘fill er up’. Jeff did not know what to say at first, but said ‘sure thing’ with an ethusiastic voice, and looked over to his wife, who got a closeup view of one of the biggest smiles she believed that she has ever seen on her husband’s face.

He said to her , “I want to talk to this fellow, share some stories about being a gas jockey.” He squirmed with a grunt out of the small space between the car and the pump and then the two begin to tell stories back and forth of experiences that they had had. They weren’t so very different.

While this was going on, Ethel got out of the car and shouted to Ted that she was going to get them a couple of cold orange drinks, he turned towards her to say ‘okay’ with the grin still shining on his face.

Once she entered the station, he stage whispered to the gas jockey that we had just thought of a surprise to play on his wife. Then he jogged over to the other side of the building, hoping that she did not see what he was doing. He knew that there was a door in the back that led straight to the cashier’s desk. He intended to sneak up on her to surprise her by asking ‘And what will you have today, madam, we have a special on axle grease for your hair?’ It was a long standing joke that they shared, like the one she would say that he was going to wash the paint off of his car

But the surprise was on him. Just before he turned the last corner, he saw that Ethel was standing quite still, as was the cashier, and that both her and the cashier were faced by a man with a gun standing behind the cash register.. He must have been the one who had driven up in the dirty white car. The dirt on the license plates was probably intentional so that he would not be identified by the people that he robbed.

He stepped back so as not to be seen. What could he do next? He didn’t have a cell phone on him, as Edna was the one to be hooked to hers when they travelled. But he did know that when he worked at the gas station there was a closet that was filled with different tools that a customer might need to use. Lug wrenches to change tires with were one such tool. He had helped a number of customers change their tires when he worked there. 

So he turned around and went straight to where he knew that the closet was. The door was a little sticky, but he still managed to open it up. He searched through it quickly, until he found the longest and thickest of the lug wrenches that he could find. He took a few experimental swings with it, and felt that it and he could do the job that needed to be done.

Then, with quick, quiet steps he tiptoed back to where he had seen his wife, the cashier and the stick-up man. Ethel saw him, and quickly turned her eyes in another direction so that her husband’s presence could not be detected by the robber. After a few more steps, he reached up as high as he could, lug wrench in hand. Then, with one almighty swing, he knocked the man down and out. Ethel took out her cell phone, and ‘called the cops’ as she put it.

While they were waiting for the police to arrive, there was a long conversation between Ted and the cashier, who was a man of about Ted and Ethel’s age, who apparently owned the place and had for some time, but not when Ted was there. Ted’s first words to him were of how working at this gas station was his first job, and that he still remembered where the tools were kept. Then he said that he admired the man for keeping gas jockeys at his gas station. 

The owner’s reply was that ‘gas and computers don’t mix.’ They became instant friends. Ted and Ethel would often stop by the gas station, even when their car didn’t really need refuelling.