I've talked about my maternal grandfather many times before. I remember him as a big, strapping man with coal dark eyes that could stare holes straight through you. He also had big earlobes that seemed to increase in size the older he became.
Grandpa was not a bad person, far from it. He was generous to a fault but he believed that you should earn his generosity. Moreover, Grandpa was an entrepreneur. He owned his own gas station in Vivian. When war broke out, he opened a gas station in Leesville, the home of
Being an entrepreneur must have run in the family because my grandparents had a neighborhood grocery store right behind their house. My Grandma ran the store but my Grandpa sliced meat in the butcher section when he wasn't running the gas station. The store seemed huge to me then with aisle after aisle of canned goods, bread and candy. It was actually quite small. When they finally closed the store, they converted the building into a stand alone two car garage.
During the summer of my second year in college I attended a geologic field camp that I serialized in the story called The Summer of Bologna. There was still a month of summer break remaining when I returned to Vivian from the camp at
Mr. T, the new owner was a crotchety sort with a heart of gold. I worked from six in the morning until eight at night, six days a week, for a salary that amounted to less than $40 per week. Those were the days of the full service filling stations and I pumped gas, washed windows and put air in tires. Mr. T even taught me how to lube a car.
The person that I worked with at the station was named Major - his first name. He didn't like coffee and always had an RC Cola and bag of peanuts for breakfast. Working for Mr. T was the zenith of his existence and he truly had no further aspirations in life.
The hours were long and the pay was low but I managed to have some fun. A pretty girl named Tammy worked at the Tastee-Freeze, the local ice cream, teenage hangout just across the street from the ESSO station, and we flirted the entire summer, culminating with a date to see James Brown in concert in
When I got older, I started my own company. Through thick and thin, mostly thin, I've managed to make a living on my own for almost thirty years. I'm almost positive that I inherited my entrepreneurial spirit from Grandpa Pitt but unfortunately that's not all. Glancing in the mirror the other day, I noticed that my ear lobes were now even bigger than his had been.