Happy birthday to a hardworking guy

Today is my stepfather’s birthday. He has been gone for a long, long time. He was a good guy. I always bought him a colorful shirt or cologne for his birthday. Bless his heart, he wore both of them when he went to church every Sunday.

During the week he worked hard for very little pay. No matter how small the paycheck, the bills were always paid, sometimes only a dollar at a time. He had an open account at Red’s gas station in Ithaca. He also had a reserved place in one of the theater seats along the wall where men gathered to talk politics.

Red’s was a full-service station. One pulled in to the only pump and within seconds were met by Red or one of the young men who worked there. They would put gas in the car, wash all the windows, check the oil and tires, all the while keeping up a steady conversation with the customer.

They also carried basic staples like bread and milk. There was a chest freezer with ice cream which we were seldom allowed to buy.  Assorted odds and ends filled the shelves. It was similar to a modern-day convenience store only smaller and more quirky.

Can you imagine a gas station that would offer that kind of service today?  Or one that would let guys congregate for hours at a time? Most places today work on the principle of get 'em in, get 'em out as fast as you can. No loitering allowed.

Today’s version of running a tab is the instruction to insert card here. Those card readers are everywhere and allow us to put off payment for a while. Social media is today’s version of the theater seats where men gathered to talk about life. Although I was never partial to the discussions, I knew they were civil, unlike the anonymous rantings on social media.

As for somebody washing our windows while filling the gas tank, well, good luck with that one. Some stations don’t even offer a squeegee and water so we can do the job ourselves.

My stepfather is long gone. Red’s closed years ago. A full-service station is almost impossible to find. I say almost because there has to be at least one holdout who refuses to abandon the old life.

I would venture a guess that there are thousands of families where one or both parents work and they still have monetary problems, but they make do however they can.

No matter how long he worked or what he did I don’t recall him complaining. He had polio as a child and as a result, one side of his body looked like a normal guy while the other side looked like someone who spent a lot of hours at the gym.

In spite of a very pronounced limp and a hand that seldom cooperated, he held a job almost until the end. Men still gather to talk politics even if they don’t have a row of cast-off theater seats facing a display of pop or ice cream that sits next to a supply of car stuff.

I know you probably don’t care a bit about a long gone stepfather. But I hope you read between the lines. If so, you will encounter a time where people did what they had to do to survive without today’s whining and complaining. It was a time when even a partially crippled man could support his family. It was a time when a service station really was a service station.

Time marches on, nothing stays the same. But sometimes when I see a garish shirt, I think of a decent, hardworking guy who willingly wore the ugly shirts I gave him. Happy birthday, Harvey, wherever you are.