Read Online The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg - Free Book Online
Authors: Fannie Flagg
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courts, tourist camps, hotels, motels, and restaurants to accommodate the traveler along the way.
In 1920, there were 15,000 gas stations in the entire country, but by 1933, the number had jumped to 170,000.
It was clear the automobile was the future, and what better business to get in than owning a gas station? Gas companies were selling franchises left and right. And Stanislaw Jurdabralinski had the perfectspot for a filling station, on the empty lot right beside his house. So using their savings and another loan from the bank, and after finishing a two-week course in service station management, Stanislaw received his Phillips 66 uniform, complete with hat and black leather bow tie, and soon, a brand-new twenty-four-hour full-service filling station opened in Pulaski.
Stanislaw was so proud to have a family business at last, but when they were naming the station, he thought Jurdabralinski’s Phillips 66 was too long, so he just named it Wink’s Phillips 66, after his son, who would inherit it someday.
The first night the station opened, when the pump topper with the big, round, illuminated glass globe lit up, the entire family stayed up for hours and watched it glow in the dark. Poppa, who would now be sleeping on a cot in the back of the station, flicked the neon OPEN ALL NIGHT light in the front window on and off for them to say good night.
From then on, their lives revolved around the filling station on the side of the house. The cheerful ding of cars and trucks coming into the station day and night meant that Poppa was busy, and that was good. Wink and the girls grew up playing with hubcaps, air hoses, old spark plugs, and rubber tires, and the smell of gasoline. It seemed like fun to them. By the time Fritzi was eleven and Wink was nine, they already knew how to change a tire and pump gas and make change at the cash register. Soon the Jurdabralinskis were simply known as the Gas Station Family. Every town had one … or soon would.
I N 1936, AFTER THE Depression had hit the country, it had been devastating, but the Jurdabralinskis did better than most, with milk and cheese from the nearby farms and eggs from the chickens that Momma kept in the backyard. And thanks to Wink, who had grown into a big, strong guy, who loved to hunt and fish, there was always food on the table.
Stanislaw had worked out a contract with the county to supply all the official vehicles—fire trucks, police cars, snowplows, and all the school buses—with gas and repair service, so when many stationsacross the country had been forced to close, Wink’s Phillips 66 managed to stay open.
In the summer of 1937, life at the Jurdabralinski house was anything but depressed. Momma played in the Thursday night Ladies Accordion Band of Pulaski, and they practiced in the living room four nights a week. The younger girls were all in the school accordion band, so they played along as well, and on most afternoons, the boys and girls from the high school would gather upstairs in the huge third-floor attic with the big record player on a table in the corner and dance and play Ping-Pong.
Fritzi and her sisters were of an age when boys were always either hanging around the station or sitting on the front porch of the big two-story brick house next door.
Even Wink, who worked at the station with his father after school, had female admirers who would pile into their cars and drive over to watch and giggle as he walked around and did a full service on their cars, washing the windows, checking the oil, water, antifreeze, and battery, and filling up the tires. They usually had only enough money for a fourteen-cent gallon of gas, sometimes just a half gallon. One local girl, Angie Broukowski, who was younger than Wink, borrowed her father’s car, and she and her friends seemed to come in more than usual, even when she didn’t have money for gas. Poppa said Old Man Broukowski’s tires had been checked more than any other car’s in the state of
In 1920, there were 15,000 gas stations in the entire country, but by 1933, the number had jumped to 170,000.
It was clear the automobile was the future, and what better business to get in than owning a gas station? Gas companies were selling franchises left and right. And Stanislaw Jurdabralinski had the perfectspot for a filling station, on the empty lot right beside his house. So using their savings and another loan from the bank, and after finishing a two-week course in service station management, Stanislaw received his Phillips 66 uniform, complete with hat and black leather bow tie, and soon, a brand-new twenty-four-hour full-service filling station opened in Pulaski.
Stanislaw was so proud to have a family business at last, but when they were naming the station, he thought Jurdabralinski’s Phillips 66 was too long, so he just named it Wink’s Phillips 66, after his son, who would inherit it someday.
The first night the station opened, when the pump topper with the big, round, illuminated glass globe lit up, the entire family stayed up for hours and watched it glow in the dark. Poppa, who would now be sleeping on a cot in the back of the station, flicked the neon OPEN ALL NIGHT light in the front window on and off for them to say good night.
From then on, their lives revolved around the filling station on the side of the house. The cheerful ding of cars and trucks coming into the station day and night meant that Poppa was busy, and that was good. Wink and the girls grew up playing with hubcaps, air hoses, old spark plugs, and rubber tires, and the smell of gasoline. It seemed like fun to them. By the time Fritzi was eleven and Wink was nine, they already knew how to change a tire and pump gas and make change at the cash register. Soon the Jurdabralinskis were simply known as the Gas Station Family. Every town had one … or soon would.
I N 1936, AFTER THE Depression had hit the country, it had been devastating, but the Jurdabralinskis did better than most, with milk and cheese from the nearby farms and eggs from the chickens that Momma kept in the backyard. And thanks to Wink, who had grown into a big, strong guy, who loved to hunt and fish, there was always food on the table.
Stanislaw had worked out a contract with the county to supply all the official vehicles—fire trucks, police cars, snowplows, and all the school buses—with gas and repair service, so when many stationsacross the country had been forced to close, Wink’s Phillips 66 managed to stay open.
In the summer of 1937, life at the Jurdabralinski house was anything but depressed. Momma played in the Thursday night Ladies Accordion Band of Pulaski, and they practiced in the living room four nights a week. The younger girls were all in the school accordion band, so they played along as well, and on most afternoons, the boys and girls from the high school would gather upstairs in the huge third-floor attic with the big record player on a table in the corner and dance and play Ping-Pong.
Fritzi and her sisters were of an age when boys were always either hanging around the station or sitting on the front porch of the big two-story brick house next door.
Even Wink, who worked at the station with his father after school, had female admirers who would pile into their cars and drive over to watch and giggle as he walked around and did a full service on their cars, washing the windows, checking the oil, water, antifreeze, and battery, and filling up the tires. They usually had only enough money for a fourteen-cent gallon of gas, sometimes just a half gallon. One local girl, Angie Broukowski, who was younger than Wink, borrowed her father’s car, and she and her friends seemed to come in more than usual, even when she didn’t have money for gas. Poppa said Old Man Broukowski’s tires had been checked more than any other car’s in the state of
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