Gerald Mecham Allen's nephew wrote down his memories of the summers he spent in Gilbert and his time at the Allen's Service Station.
Allen's Service in Gilbert
This is a puny attempt to put down on paper the experience of 10 summers that happened a long time ago. Please forgive my shortcomings and clouded memory. To me, those days are like a fairy tale time - "the good old days". I had such a good time each summer and the station was a big part of it. If given the chance, I would relive those times again and again.
Once upon a time, there was an old Shell station in downtown Gilbert, right across from the Town Hall. The building there now is a Texaco station and the old building across the street has been turned into a library. There are only two things left in Gilbert that are the same as in those days - Liberty Market and Clement's Garage (even this is missing the gas pumps). Oh, there is one other thing - the water tower - and Nanette tells me there is no water in it. Speaking of the water tower, I remember the day that the town ran out of water (Gerry was on the Town Council and the closest town official to the Town Hall, so consequently, he was informed). A tank truck was sent to Mesa (or sent from Mesa) to pick up water to get through this crisis.
I don't remember the first time I actually went to the station and was paid for my services, but I do remember the pay rate - 10 cents an hour. I probably swept up or cleaned up for two or three hours and then went home. I remember being too short to reach the middle of the windshields, so I got a wooden box to stand on so I could wash the customer's windshields when they came in to buy gas. This service is highly unusual in today's self-service world. We also checked the oil, battery and tire pressure for the customer. The windshield washing fluid was a home-made concoction. Only Gerry knew the exact recipe, but I know it contained water, ammonia and ladies perfume. Instead of spray bottles like we see today, the fluid was put into metal cans that were pressurized by air. When these cans worked right, a fine mist of the washer fluid would spray on the window, when they didn't, the fluid would dribble out and make the job difficult. Since Gilbert in these olden days was a rural area, bugs on the windshield were a major nuisance. We used steel wool to get the bazillions of bug off the windshield and then would use a cloth (not a paper towel) to finish the job and make the windshields "sparkle".
Repairing tires was a big deal at the station. Tubeless tires were in their infancy and were somewhat unreliable. To repair a tire, first the bead about the wheel had to be "broken", that is because the air pressure in the tire pushed the inner ring of the tire forcefully against the outer edge of the wheel. It had to be forcefully pushed away from the wheel. Being pretty skinny, I always had trouble with this part of the job, because one had to apply great pressure to the little machine that enabled onto break the bead. Many times, Gerry or someone else would have to do this so the repair could proceed. We then used tire irons to get the tire loose from the wheel. When one side of the tire loosened, we could pull the tube out to find the hole. It was not usually obvious as to where the hole was, so we would fill the inner tube with air and push it down into a water trough to find the air bubbles and consequently the leak that had to be patched. We would then prepare the area around the hole by buffing it to rough up the area, the applying a liberal coat of rubber cement around the spot and finally cutting a patch of the proper size and placing over the hole in the tube. We then vulcanized this by putting the tube with the patch down on a hot plate (not the red hot cooking kind, but a flat steel plate that would warm up the patch and surrounding area of the tube to "weld" the patch and tube together) with a vise to hold the tube firmly in place. It would "cook" for a few minutes on the plate. During this time, we would look for any nails in the tire so that we would not repuncture the tube when putting it back into the tire. All this was hard work, especially in the Arizona heat. I remember the sweat beading up on Gerry's forehead as he would repair tires. There was plenty of my sweat and Bill's as well spent on these tires. Later in my life, I used an air powered tire machine to repair and mount tires. I thought about the "olden days" when we had to do it all by man or boy power.
On days that we were to receive gasoline, we would "stick the tanks". There was a long pole with two sets of line and numbers marked on it. This is kind of like the oil dipstick in our cars - by opening up the fill hole on the tanks and inserting the stick, we could tell how much gas was left in the tanks. One problem, the tanks were different sizes, so you had to make sure you had the right readings for the "regular" and "ethyl". I would stick the tanks and tell Gerry how much we had, then he would call Cardon Oil and order the necessary amount for the next few days.
One of my jobs was to fill the pop machines. Gerry had this cool Coke machine that was cooled by water. The small (6 oz?) bottles would be inserted into the empty spaces upright with the machine lid open. The water was in constant circulation around the bottles and through the cooling unit. I'm sure the temperature was set as low as possible without the water freezing up to make the coke as refreshing as possible on hot summer days. Gerry had also rigged a water fountain to use the same cooling effect - he ran a copper pipe through the innards of the Coke machine and out to a fountain on the side of the box. Because this water was so cold and refreshing, many people came to the station just to get a drink of water and maybe shoot the bull with Gerry or their friends they saw as they drove by. Later on, Gerry got another machine to hold the larger bottles of Barq's of various flavors, Dr. Pepper and RC Cola. Back to the Coke machine - the slots in the machine were in a circular pattern. There was a large rotating panel on the top of the box with a small door in it. You would put your nickel (yes, 5 cents) into the machine and pull a handle out about 6 inches. This would mechanically move that rotating panel a few inches, you would open the door and pull out your ice cold Coke. I drank lots of Cokes in those days. My other favorite was Barq's grape - you know like Radar O'Reilly's grape Nephi. I would give a lot of dollars to have that old Coke machine in my garage.
I remember "lagging" to see who would by the pop for everyone else. Usually I didn't get to participate, since I was just a kid and couldn't afford to by for everyone (even at 5 or 10 cents). The participants would pick a line in the concrete and toss their coins at the line. The one furthest away from the line bought for himself and everyone else.
If we had had a dust storm the night before, we needed to sweep and clean the pump areas, the office, the lube rack, the wash rack and whatever. Every morning we would restock the oil cans and other merchandise inside the cashier area. We also wiped down the bulk oil tanks and did any other necessary housekeeping to make the station presentable. We would fill up the windshield solvent containers and put out clean cloths for cleaning the windshields. The battery water caddies also had to be refilled with distilled water from a 5-gallon bottle behind the building. Arizona summers dried out those batteries something fierce We cleaned the toilets and restocked them as necessary. As the day went on, we would clean up after ourselves to make the next day's opening as easy as possible.
As time went on, I was allowed to lubricate the cars, change the oil and oil filter and service the old oil-bath air cleaners. Gerry always knew where the grease fittings were on the various cars, but I would hunt and hunt to find all the fittings. Gerry always checked to make sure I got them all. Invariably I missed at least one. The air lift we used had two cylinders - one for the front end of the cars and the other for the rear. Consequently, there were two separate handles to lift a car in the air to work underneath. This was kind of tricky, because the two cylinders did not fill with air at the same rate. I was told to be very careful so that I did not inadvertently dump a car off onto the ground or onto a person. Luckily, I learned enough to correct as I went and never lost a vehicle.
Speaking of lube, oil & filter service - one day I serviced Bob Miller's car. I did all the normal things- drained the oil, lubed the fittings, refilled with oil and serviced the air cleaner. As I was pushing the drain oil tank out from under the vehicle, somehow the whole thing fell over and dumped 20 gallons or so of drain oil all over the lube bay. In those days before we knew about environmental problems caused by oil in the sewers, I was able to squeegee all the oil into the drain in the lube bay. I then used kerosene or some other solvent to wash down the same area and keep it from being slick. When I got all that done, I finished up the job and decided it was not a very good day and walked home with Gerry's permission. When he came home later that day, I found out the full extent of my problems. Instead of draining the crankcase, I had drained the transmission fluid. This meant the the vehicle was overfilled with oil, which can cause the engine to fail, as well as his dry transmission. Luckily, on his way home, Bob had heard a big clunk in the engine compartment and stopped to see what the problem was. He found that I had not secured the air cleaner well enough and that it had fallen off and spilled oil onto the engine. He went immediately back to the station to clean up this mess. This led Gerry to discover that the oil level was too high and surmising that the wrong pan had been drained, he check the transmission grease and found it was empty. So a great disaster was avoided and I found out what a terrible, no-good, rotten day it had really been.
Eating lunch at the station was an experience. Chrissy would usually prepare a hot meal, which we usually ate at home. Sometimes, Gerry couldn't leave the station to eat, so the meal was brought to us. The back building, which was the only place where there was someplace to sit, had a tin roof. Think of it - tin roof, Arizona summer - it was pretty dang hot in there. So we would sit there having hot soup or some other hot meal - talk about your sweat.
Eventually, my regular daily job was to do the "check-out", that is the daily bookkeeping for the station. To do this, I would read the pump meters; count all the oil (including the bulk oil tanks); total the cash register (which I also would give serious bucks to own today); count the cash, checks and credit cards in the register and gather up all the charge tickets for the previous day. The biggest part of this to "break down" the tape - that is to total up the sales by category from the cash register tape. If it was a good day, this would only take 30-60 minutes. If it was a day when things didn't go right or I hit the wrong keys on the adding machine, it might take 3-4 hours. There was a particular form we followed in putting all this information down in a spiral notebook. When all the work was completed, I would make up the bank deposit for the day, determine what kind of change we needed and then head to the bank. Sometimes, the deposit would be up to $500 - that doesn't sound like much today, but in the low inflation, low price days of of the 1950's, it was a small fortune (especially to a kid like me). I told Gerry several years ago that it is all his fault that I wound up in the accounting racket.
There was an old red Ford (?) pickup that was the service truck that I first remember. It had lettering on both doors showing it was from Allen's Service in Gilbert. That was very impressive to me - that there was a truck with a sign on the side. This is another item I wish I owned now. Later on, Gerry got the Jeep pickup that lasted for several years after the demise of Allen's Service. I always liked that Ford better.
Where the Circle K sits now in downtown Gilbert was a vacant lot. Gerry decided one summer that we needed to kill all the red ants that had nests in that field. He made up a mixture of drain oil and kerosene that we poured on the anthills. We would let it soak into the ground for a few minutes (probably another environmental no-no) and then light it on fire. We would not see any activity for a week or so, but then the anthill would come back as strong as ever. I guess this was not one of the great successes in insect control.
I remember one evening, after a dust storm, Jimmy Carnes called from the station. The wind had blown the door shut to the room where the cash register was. Jimmy didn't have a key to that door. For some reason, I was the only one at home, and so Gerry's keys were not around. Jimmy asked me to come over to the station and try to squeeze through the bars on the back window (no glass on the window) so that I could open the door from the inside. I walked over to the station, Jimmy gave me a boost up to the window sill and I did squeeze through those bars. This is amazing to me - 1. That he would think of such a solution and, 2. That I could actually get through the bars.
Some of the regular customers I remember are Ken Udall, Bob Miller, Don Jeter, Wayne Van, Bob Flaherty, Gerald Carpenter, Father O'Boyle, George Pew, the McCrites, George Salas and many others. The big competition in town was Dennis Hallock's Union station at the north end of town. I don't think there was any bad blood between Gerry and Hillock, it was just a friendly rivalry to see who could survive or maybe even prosper.
I will always treasure those days. I will always treasure the opportunity to work side by side with Gerry. I will always treasure the knowledge that Gerry loves me and wants the best for me.
Written by Rusty Henrichsen
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