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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (22175)	7/26/2010 4:37:07 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 86356

Thats what I figure.

To: longnshort who wrote (22175)	7/26/2010 8:32:14 PM
From: Eric	2 Recommendations Respond to of 86356

Shorty I'm impressed! I did pump gas while in high school. I wanted a better job than cutting lawns in the neighborhood so my dad suggested that I try working at the garage on the island I grew up on here between Seattle and Tacoma. I was 16 and wanted to work on cars. I had taken care of my folks cars for a number of years (oil and filter changes, tune-ups ect) So he drove me over to Lou's garage. There were four gas stations on the island but only one full service station with a real garage. They did everything including rebuilding automatic transmissions and full engine rebuilds. I was offered the job and if I did well my pay would increase. Got out of high school every day at 2:30pm and then would ride my bike over to his shop about a mile and a half away. Started out just running the front office, pumping gas and doing oil changes. A month later when the owner realized I could do tune-ups I started doing that too. My pay went up from $1.50 per hour (remember this is 1968) to $2.50. This was way cool because the other kid there was stuck just pumping gas and with my base wage Lou offered me commission on top to sell TBA. Tires, batteries and accessories. So by summertime I was rolling in the cash and Lou decided to teach me how to rebuild engines. That brought in another pay increase. I had bought the recently broken down car from my dad for $50 and Lou towed it over to the shop. There was a big grin on his face because he told me that my 1953 car had won the Mexican road race in 1953. 1st, 2nd,3rd and 4th places. Four factory stock american cars, all exactly the same model. So after going to college in Boston a few years earlier he became the lead mechanic of the biggest Lincoln Mercury dealer in Boston. His dad had started the garage on the island just after WWII but be came ill with cancer in 1965 so Lou came back to take over his dad's business. By the following year I was running the garage by myself on weekends and Lou and his wife finally got a three week vacation. In my senior class nobody was making more than me except some friends of mine who worked on their dads fishing boat in Alaska during the summer months. They pulled down over $30,000 each for 2 1/2 months work! How many high school kids did that well in 1969?? So when I started college I had a lot of cash. My folks didn't have to pay a dime for my education and since I'd been working the stock market a number of years already it was no problem. I still worked a couple summers at Lou's shop rebuilding automatics and engines in my spare time for him. Good money, great skills learned. It's sad that most small garages have folded in this country. So by my junior year in college I told him that I would not come back that summer. He was disappointed but not surprised. So flash forward about 12 years, his son had grown up and had taken over the family garage with his fathers help. Three generations, not too bad! It's still the only full service garage on the island. One thing you guys might get a kick out of is the station had only two pumps, Regular and Premium. Their tanks were both 550 gallons each... that's right, only 550 gallons. The big gas truck would drop by every two or three days and drop us some gas. We had the smallest tanks on the island. Selling gas was not the main business but it brought in a lot of work that netted much, much more. When I started there in 68 it was affiliated with Shell and then Lou signed a contract with Chevron in 1970. But here is the interesting part.. every Thursday at 5 sharp in the afternoon we would get a call from Shell and then later Chevron. It was the "set the price of gasoline" call. We had to sell the gas at a specific price specified by Shell or Chevron. The station owner had no flexibility. It was fixed by the head office on the West coast! We sure don't do that anymore. Shall we say price fixing! By the way Shorty. I've never worked for NPR. That's radio. (although I was called in a few times to fix their transmitter on campus when nobody else could!) You get one gold star. So from the retailing side of the petroleum business I learned a lot. How about gas for 19.9 cents a gallon? It's gone up a lot more than inflation since then. I never did get the chance to drive his wreckers. They were the biggest on the island (custom built from the ground up by Lou's dad). Had to be 21 and have a commercial drivers license. But I did get to drive his cherry custom 1934 Ford model A aluminum flathead V8 shortbed pickup. Boy would I love to have it today. It's still out front in mint condition. Ahhh, the memories...