March 14, 2014 (Friday )
I stopped at the service station to get gasoline. I had my choice of several grades of gasoline or diesel, each one having its own price. I also had my choice of nine pumps, each one exactly like the others, with several hoses and nozzles each. I put my debit card into the slot, and when it was approved, I was given a message, printed on a screen, to select the correct nozzle, then select the specific grade, place the nozzle into the car’s tank, and pull a trigger that let the gasoline flow into the tank. Meanwhile, the screen display on the pump kept telling me how much gasoline was being transferred to the car’s tank and its cost. When the car’s tank was full, the pump cut itself off, I placed it back in its cradle, punched “Yes” when it asked if I wanted a receipt, then advised to wait while it was being printed. A receipt complete with all the information one would ever need about the transaction appeared. I retrieved it, got back in my car, and drove away. I never saw another person the whole time I was there. If I had wanted to go inside the building, I would have found a clerk and a pretty fair sized grocery store.
I thought about how that was done when I was a child in the back seat of our old pre-war car. Daddy drove up to the “filling station,” where there was one pump. Daddy sat in 
the car with his family, and a man came out from a little shack and greeted him, “Hi, there, Charlie, how ya’ doin’? How’s everybody? Looking into the back seat he waved and said, “Hi, kids.” “What’ll it be?” he asked my father. “Five’ll do it,” Daddy replied. The man turned to the pump and started pulling a huge handle back and forth and as he did that, gasoline rushed from a tank beneath the ground to a glass chamber at the top of the pump. On the side of the glass was written numbers indicating how much gas was there. He kept pulling and pushing the pump handle until the level of gasoline in the glass chamber reached the “5 gal” level. Then he removed the cap from the car’s tank, placed the nozzle from the pump into the neck of the tank, flipped a little valve on the hose, and the gasoline ran from the glass chamber on the gas pump down a hose and into the car’s tank. Gravity supplied the power. In the meantime, the man wiped the windshield and checked the tires, oil and radiator water (anti freeze was used only in the winter). When he was through, he replaced the nozzle onto the pump, took a shop towel from his belt, wiped his hands, and said, “Looks like a dollar will do it, Charlie.” “Thanks, John,” Daddy would say, and then started the car and we all drove away.
I was born in time to see all the old ways when a lot of them were still pretty new. Ain’t life grand?