Barney’s Enco

By Randy Haglund

What was your first hourly-paid job?

Mine was working as a service station attendant when I was in high school. It was at Barney’s Enco at the corner of Driscoll and Rowan in northwest Spokane.

In those days they weren’t called gas stations or filling stations. They were called service stations because we provided service. Something rarely found in today’s do-it-yourself world. There were no self-checkout registers at the grocery store and no such thing as self-service at the gas pump either. Most people didn’t even know how to work a gas pump.

If you drove into Barney’s you’d run over a rubber hose that would cause a bell to ring inside. I’d come running out and you’d say “fill ‘er up with regular.” Or maybe you’d just get a dollar’s worth or even less. The price back then was thirty-six cents a gallon so if you were just trying to get to payday you might ask for a buck’s worth.

We had regular or “Extra.” The Extra was kind of like Premium or Ethyl. It had higher octane and an “anti-knock” formula. I had never heard of unleaded.

When I say service, I don’t mean I just put gas in your tank. I cleaned your windshield, and if you needed other windows or your mirrors cleaned I did those, too. Then I’d ask if you wanted your oil checked. If so, I’d check other fluids while I was under the hood.

Most cars had the gas fill in the rear back then, not on the side. Behind the license plate was common. But one time a guy came in with a ’56 Chevy and told me to fill ‘er up. I looked and looked, but couldn’t find the gas cap. I noticed him watching me from his mirror with a bemused expression.

“Okay, I give up,” I said.

He told me it was behind the tail light, but I still couldn’t figure it out. I could tell he enjoyed befuddling the new guy, but he eventually got out and showed me the tricky switch at the top that flipped the assembly open to access the gas cap. After that, I discovered that some other models had unique ways to hide the gas cap, too. I got to know them all.

The service at Barney’s station included car repairs, too. He had two bays equipped with hoists. Barney did the mechanic work mostly. Oil changes, tune-ups and tires were common. But Barney wasn’t afraid to do any kind of work on your car.

I was hired primarily to work at the pumps, although Barney did teach me how to bust tires, repair punctures, and mount and balance them.

Times change and people do things different than they used to. For example, when Barney cleaned the floors of the shop, he used gasoline. After all, it was cheap, plentiful, and worked well. When he was done, he washed it all out of the garage into the parking lot with a hose.

Job done.

Nobody ever gave a thought to how that leaded gasoline might impact the environment. And all the while he did the job with his ever-present lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

Uh-huh.

People usully paid for their gas with cash. I had to run into the office and make change at the till. The cash register didn’t calculate the change, I had to do that in my head. I can still do it, but most young people can’t these days

Some people paid with a check. I don’t remember ever asking for I.D.

But sometimes they used a credit card. They didn’t have chips or even magnetic strips back then. But the raised letters and numbers were important. After handing me the card, I would run into the office with it and hand-write the amount on a credit card sales slip. Placing the card and slip in a special machine, I would then slide the top of the machine over the card twice. The embossed figures on the card left an imprint on the sales slip. After you signed it, I would give you the top copy. The other two carbons went to Barney and the Credit Card Company.

Nothing was done electronically in those days, it was all manual.

Service stations didn’t have convenience stores yet, but we did have a few things for sale. We sold lots of motor oil, for example. They came in cans, not bottles. We had a special spout that punctured the can in order to dispense the oil.

We also sold things like power steering fluid, transmission fluid, brake fluid and so on.

Besides automotive products, we had three vending machines in the office. The cigarette machine sold packs of cigarettes for forty cents a pack if memory serves. A candy machine had candy bars for ten cents or five cents depending. Five-packs of Wrigley’s chewing gum were five cents each. I think we had Beeman’s, too.

My favorite one was the pop machine. It was a chest where you lifted the lid and twelve ounce glass bottles hung in tracks with the cap facing up. Coke, Orange Nesbitt, Dad’s Root Beer, and Sprite. Nobody drank diet pop. After putting a dime in the slot, you would slide the bottle down the track by holding the cap, and then up through a gate.

When Barney wasn’t around, I spent hours trying to figure out how to get more than one bottle up through the gate so that I wouldn’t have to spend a whole dime on one lousy bottle of pop. Years later, my older brother who had worked there before me said that he knew where the key was and helped himself to free pop all the time.

Now he tells me.

I had no idea back then that I would someday reminisce about those times. To me, it was the future that seemed special. Now, I look to the past. I guess it’s just human nature to think that whatever time your living, some other time is/was better.

***

What was your first hourly-paid job?