I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to fill up with gas and to get a few grocery items. Jake came out to fill my tank. I asked if his daughter, Chrissy, was planning to be in for the holidays and he grinned. She and her daughter, Ellie, were going to be here for the week from Christmas through New Years. Paul, Chrissy’s husband, would only be able to stay over Christmas as he had to get back to Jersey the Monday after. Jake finished filling my tank and asked if I had noticed I have a drip coming from under the front of my car. I told him I have an annoying leak in the radiator. I have had the car to several shops that have had a hand at fixing the leak, but it keeps coming back. I have decided to just get the radiator replaced and be done with it as I am getting tired of taking it in to the shop every few months. In the mean time I keep a container of coolant in the car and keep a close eye on the liquid level.
Jake sighed. Back in the good old days, before automobiles became so computer complicated, I could have brought my car to him and he could have fixed it. Freddy Jefferson, a young man who worked in Jake’s garage part time, was right handy with machinery and could fix most anything. Folks around Soagie would take their cars in to the full time shops in Corinth and have them worked on and they still wouldn’t run right and they would stop by Charlie’s and Freddy would fix the problem right off. That young mad sure had a way with machinery. I asked where Freddy is now and Jake said he met a girl out of Nashville and they got married and moved away. Last he heard, Freddy was working at the Saturn Plant up in middle Tennessee.
After Freddy left, Jake pretty much got out of the auto repair business as cars came to be more and more computer dependent. It got so a man had to invest in a lot of expensive diagnostic gear just to change a spark plug. Jake still fixes flats and works on farm equipment some, but he mostly uses the building where he once did auto repair for a storage building. Jake thinks things have just become too complicated these days. He misses the good old days when life was so much more simple and a man knew what to expect from the day when he got up in the morning. All these new gadgets are convenient to have, but when they break down it is often easier to just trash them and get a new one than it is to try and repair the things.
We had come inside the store from filling up my car with gas and walked up to the counter where Jake wrote down the amount of gas. Mister Johnson was standing there with an arm load of items he planned to buy and take home. He listened as Jake continued to talk. Jake looked up from writing down the amount of gas and said those new gas pumps outside were a prime example of what he was talking about. The old pumps that had stood out front of the store for all those many years were simple to operate and reliable. If something broke down with them, you could get a new part and fix the pump yourself. The old pumps didn’t have all the features of the new modern pumps. You couldn’t pay for the gas you pumped with a credit card right there at the pump like you can with these new pumps and the old pumps only recorded gas prices up to ninety-nine cents. Nobody thought when those old pumps were made that gas would ever be over a dollar per gallon, but the old pumps did the job they were designed for. If these new pumps break down, Jake has to call a specialist from the fuel distributor to come out and get the things back in operation.
Jake was also complaining he doesn’t even have use for half the new fangled features those new pumps offer. He has had one customer who was out from Memphis to visit with her parents who wanted to pay for her gas at the pump with her credit card. Everyone in Soagie who stops for gas usually pays with cash or by writing a personal check. Jake just wishes things could go back the way they were in the good old days.
Mister Johnson had been listening to all this without saying anything. He leaned on the counter and asked, if Jake was so fond of the good old days, why he had decided to replace the old pot belly stove with a new gas heater when the old stove had seen its best days. It had taken petition from half the regulars who come into the store to convince Jake to replace the old stove with a new pot belly heater. Now Jake wasn’t expecting that prong of attack and he was taken aback just a bit. Finally he recovered and said he just thought the gas heater would have been more efficient. He would not have had to come into a cold store in the winter mornings and start a fresh fire in a gas heater. He could have just turned the thermostat back up a little and gone about his business of setting up for the day.
Mister Johnson suggested that was the reason most new gadgets were so popular. They made it easier to get on with your life and do the things you want and not be bothered with taking up your time with the things that slow you down. Mister Johnson was right there with the other Charlie’s Regulars insisting Jake get the new pot belly stove because it kept Charlie’s like the old store the people in Soagie knew so well, but Mister Johnson has no regret about leaving the good old days behind. Mister Johnson remembers a time when he couldn’t eat in the same restaurants as the white folks and the time when it was hard to find a rest room when you went to town. Mister Johnson remembers a time when some folks talked because he would go and visit Miss Nelda Ramer and sit on her back porch and they would just talk. Mister Johnson does not long for those times to return. The good old days were not so good for Mister Johnson’s people. Mister Johnson thinks the good old days are now. There has never been a time when some folks did not have something to stand around and complain about, not even back in the good old days.
END
