I live just a mile from downtown Jacksonville, in a little neighborhood that most in town don’t even know exists. Our little neighborhood, St. Nicholas Park, is just one of several tiny communities that make up the general area of St. Nicholas. Our homes were built around the time of the great war, when shipbuilding was a booming industry. Families located to our neighborhoods, and lived in our modest homes, and went to work to the sound of a whistle each morning.
Our neighborhoods are the type where families raise their children, and then their children buy a house next door, and raise their own children. On the weekends, our streets are so quiet, that once, I held a yard sale, and only twelve cars came by…half of which were residents. There are, that I know of, at least four families on my street, mine being one of them, that feed and care for the stray cats, and everyone knows “Sabrina”, the lumbering sweetheart of a dog down the street.
I often tell people that it’s something akin to Mayberry, or at least as close as you can get in a big city these days.
In our quiet piece of Mayberry, we even have our own little service station. Not a ‘gas’ station, but an actual service station. Guy’s Shell Station not only sells gas, it is one of the rare, remaining, full service stations in town. They offer the conveniences that we’ve all come to expect; self-serv pumps, pay-at-the-pump, etc…, but they also offer (for a price, of course) full service pumps. At these pumps, they will not only fill up your car on a cold and rainy day, but they will check your fluids and your tires, and they’ll do it all with a smile.
Steve, the owner of Guy’s, works as hard as any person there. He is a very unassuming kind of man. At 6′2″, he’s very striking, in that one does not typically see an Asian man who is so tall. He still has quite an accent, and sometimes you need to strain a little to understand what he’s saying, yet, over the years, I’ve come to understand him pretty well.
Steve, and his lead mechanic, Bradley, have brought my car back from the brink of death on too many occasions to recall. They always take the time to explain the problem, and you never feel taken advantage of. And trust me, as a woman dealing one-on-one with a mechanic, that is a rare experience, indeed.
Once, while riding around town, checking out the changes in the surrounding neighborhood, I ran out of gas. I simply wasn’t paying attention, and to make matters worse, I had forgotten my cell phone at home. So, I knocked on the door of a house nearby, and asked to use the phone. The woman inside was obviously nervous about allowing a stranger into her home, and thus brought her phone out to me. She asked me, “What’s the number?”, and without a bit of hesitation, I spouted out the number to Guy’s.( I still can’t believe it. I actually knew the number to my local service station.) The cashier answered the phone, and I asked for Steve. I told him what I had done, and five minutes later, he came to my rescue.
There have been other times when the fellas at the station have been more than neighborly. Just a couple weeks ago, I pulled into the station, and discovered that due to their switch from Shell to Baron Oil, that the credit machines were temporarily inoperable. Steve didn’t even hesitate…he told me to fill ‘er up…”Just bring it by in a couple of days, whenever you get a chance. I know you’re good for it.”
Last Thursday, when I went get fuel, I went inside to pay, and the attendant, who’s name is Brandon, and I began to talk. We had chit-chatted in the past, but this time we talked for about thirty minutes. We discussed cars..his wife drives a Mazda 929. He said that he was ready to get away from the station because he had only come in to help out Steve temporarily since the young guys that were there before him had been stealing. He asked why I had just left work when it was after 8:00 p.m.. We discussed his day job: He was a waste-water management specialist. He had met Steve when he was working on the inspections for the station, and because he lived in the neighborhood, he used Guy’s service station, too. We talked about our neighborhood. We talked about Steve’s new house, and laughed about how our “dinky, old” houses would still be standing long after many of the new houses had fallen. He laughed when I suggested that perhaps I should negotiate my repair costs a little better, if Steve could afford a half-million dollar house. He surmised that Steve had come from money, that if he had to rely upon his income from the station, that he’d be living in a trailer. He told me about how tough it was for Steve to hold on to the station because of the employees who had stolen from him, and because the station had already been robbed a few times in the past. We both said what a shame it is for someone to work so hard, and have others take from him what was his. I noticed the time, and we said goodbye. I said “See ya later.”, and off I went.
This morning, I arrived at work to find my phone ringing off the hook. It was my daughter, and she said “Mom! You’re not going to believe this!”
And she was right. In fact, I still can’t believe it.
Just a few days ago I was laughing and chit-chatting with this quiet, friendly man. A man who was ready to get back to his usual schedule, but who had been happy to help where he could. A man who had always served with a smile, and had added even more to the already neighborly feel of the place.
And now, I just can’t get his face out of mind. He was just doing a job the best he could, and some person thought that whatever little they could get was worth taking his life to get it.
This is why, today, I can’t stop myself from crying at the loss of the clerk at the gas station down the street from me.