Will we soon be Pumping Ethyl again?

Shortly after I went to work at Happy Jack's Natco Service, one of the mechanics, Barney, a good ole dude from the Ozarks, was standing at the gas pumps, and he said, "hey kid, come on over, I'll show you something you never seen before."

Okay.

He held up the regular gas hose in one hand, his cigarette lighter in the other.

He lit the lighter and squeezed the gas nozzle for about a quarter second.

The gas exploded into about a 10-foot wide fireball that rose about 50 feet into the sky.

Barney was right. I never seen nothin like that before. Especially since I had run and dove behind a concrete wall on the edge of the station lot.

Barney let out a wild hillbilly cackle as the fireball rose into the night. He looked like an Ozark Satan with the gas pump of death in his hand.

Barney also liked to drink Kessler's whiskey straight out of the bottle.



Happy Jack, the crusty old station owner, used to go home every day at 5 p.m.

By 5.15, Barney the night manager would dispatch one of us pump monkeys to the party store 100 yards across the street, with a $5 bill to pick him up a pint of Kesslers, which he'd swig throughout the night. And offer us young punks a gulp or two once in a while. " Toughen us up," etc etc.

After the rest of us started taking more than a half swallow at a time, Barney's Kessler bottles started to empty out pretty fast, so Barney helpfully suggested, "hey, why don't yew boys start picking up Kessler's bottles of yer own? They're pretty cheap! (In those days, they were.)"

So pretty soon the pump monkeys sent over every afternoon to the party store to pick up Barney's pint of Kessler's were picking up pints for everybody.

Which meant that usually by the end of the shift at 11 or midnight, every single person on the crew was drunk to the fuckin' gills.

And of course the hole-in-the-wall dive bar across the street from the party store didn't shut down until 2 a.m., either.

So a typical work day might go something like, 3-4 p.m., show up at work; 5:30 p.m., start drinking Kessler's, over the next 7 hours drink a pint (16 ounces, about 10 "standard drinks"), at 12-12:30 close up the gas station, stagger across the street to the Hole In The Wall Dive Bar for another 1 1/2 hours of serious drinking, during which you could pound down another 4-5 drinks. Then drive home. Jesus.

Meanwhile, on the days you WEREN'T working, as often as not you'd come rolling in to the Hole In The Wall Dive Bar about 2-3 p.m., to have "a couple beers on your day off." (And usually scam a free cheeseburger-and-fries lunch off our friends, the waitresses who worked there.)

Which, of course, usually ended up with closing the joint up at 2:30 a.m.

This only went on for maybe six months, thank god. One day Barney showed up for work with some kind of decrepit boat hitched to his pickup truck (or maybe it was a tent camper, or maybe a snowmobile, or maybe a cement mixer, or maybe he was riding a motorcycle, maybe he was riding a horse, what the hell do I remember, I was probably drunk off my ass), and said he was leaving for Arkansas. And off he went.

I haven't seen Barney in almost 40 years. And guess what: I haven't drunk a drop of Kessler's in almost 40 years, either.

 

Shit. I've drunk less in the last 10 years than I used to put away in a good month at Happy Jack's Natco.

 

I hit "like" on the story of Barney in its original form, when it cut off after about six paragraphs. Now it has grown into one of the all-time legends. Holy shit. And I'd have never seen it if I hadn't happened to scroll back up.

 

Well, I remembered the original story of Barney as Ozark Satan brandishing the flaming gas pump of death, then I remembered his nightly swigging of Kessler's, which probably led up to that.

The fact I remember anything at all from those days is surprising.

Actually I could write a whole book about the hijinks at Happy Jack's Natco. Maybe I will. Talk about some crazy ass Carter/Reagan era shit. The soundtrack album itself would be awesome.

 

This movie came out in 1979, (although I didn't see it until the late 1990s), exactly the time I was working at Happy Jack's.

In many ways, it's quite realistic.

 

I used to buy a half-pint of Kessler (Smooth as Silk) to take into Mizzou football games during the Woody's Wagon and Bob Stull years. God-awful whiskey, and it did nothing to help that damn fifth-down game.

 

I started drinking enough to matter when I was a junior in high school. The usual choices went two ways, either an eight pack of seven ounce pony Miller beer or for the ambitious or looking to get seriously fucked up a bottle of Rebel Yell.



Rotgut whiskey. 750 ml is $12.99 or so now, lord knows how cheap it was in 1973.

 

I think Kessler's was just under $5 a pint in 1978-79.

Six-packs were $3- $4.

40s were usually $1.00.

 

My roommate in college made a coolie cup (koozie, huggy -- whatever you call it) for a 40-ouncer for a marketing class final project. We drank a lot of 40s back in the day.

 

When Barney wasn't getting us started guzzling Kessler's from pint bottles, we used to suck down Miller High Life 40s nonstop.

The 18-year-old drinking age was an awesome thing.

Jesus Christ, we used to have to use the wrecker to make the nightly booze runs to the party store.

It hasn't been 40 years .... but it's been a long long time since I drank a 40.

 

This stuff got me through college. About $5 a fifth at the ABC store on Three Chopt.

 

Another Happy Day at Happy Jack's:

Happy Jack's Natco was located right on the off-ramp of an interstate freeway heading through Metro Starrville.

We were about two blocks away from a major shopping mall, and also right on the main drag between the state capitol and Starrville State U.

Pretty much everybody who was anybody, and everybody who wasn't, came through the joint at some time.

A lot of state government types were semi-regulars. A few of us part-time college-student types (the "smarty boys," Barney used to call us), knew who some of these people were by sight, and it wasn't too hard to figure out anyway, since they were using state-issued credit cards.

We noticed the leading state officials were driving pretty awesome cars. Luxury Lincolns, Cadillacs, etc etc.

Anyway, I'm sitting there at Happy Jack's one day, the driveway bell rings, ding ding, I go out to the pumps, and it's the (state) Secretary of State in a prestige-package Oldsmobile.

OK, fine, we had people up to and including the governor in there, no big deal. So I say, "What can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?"

Nothing unusual: "Fill it up, check the oil."

We pump monkeys loved it when people on government credit cards came rolling in, because we got bonuses based on driveway accessory sales, and the people on the government cards usually said, "fine, put it in" to anything you tried to sell 'em.

I knew Mr. Secretary was an easy touch, so I sold him a bottle of washer fluid. We just kind of talked aimlessly.

While I was pouring in the washer fluid, he asked me for directions to one of the major buildings at Starrville State. I rattled off the directions, as I had to thousands of others.

Mr. Secretary, the guy whose signature adorned the front of every drivers' license in the state, the guy in charge of enforcing all traffic laws, nodded and listened intently. "OK, yeah, two miles, third major stoplight, McDonald's on right. Gotcha."

He signed the card, got in his car, pulled out of the driveway, and cruised smoothly out of sight.

Down the wrong way of a one-way street.