Most of my early years were spent as a "gas station rat". When I was 10 I use to hang out at a local Sinclair station after school. After a while they offered me a job cleaning rest rooms, restocking oil shelves and filling pop machines each day after school. Graduated to washing cars on Saturday at a local Phillips station - cost $2.50 to hand wash the car, scrub the white walls, chammy, vacuum inside and clean the windows. Begin working at my future wifes uncles gas station when I was 13 and stayed until high school graduation. Old enough to remember the gas wars. We had four stations - one on each corner (now hard to believe) A Texaco, Phillips, Deep Rock and DX. It would get crazy - as soon as one lowered gas by a penny another would drop theirs down 2 and so on. I can still see to this day the cardboard sign at the DX station across the street advertising gas at 14 cents a gallon! Military and career took me far away from those days but little did I know that the smell of gasoline and oil running down your arm each time you would change an oil filter would leave it's mark on me for life. Started collecting 5 yrs ago after I retired. Gas pumps, signs, oil cans and lubesters now consume my time. First task each morning is to go out to the "barn" and look it all over - as a good friend once told me, "kinda makes your heart sing" just looking at this stuff.
