Growing up in Monroe, my father had a Mobile station on the town square. The Mobile station later became a Shell station. Jack’s Mobile turned into Jack’s Shell.

I worked for my father after school, sweeping the floor, pumping gas, and washing windshields. This was back in the days when service stations were real service stations. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the middle of the windshield, so I stood on a five-gallon bucket.

One of the men who used to come in and drink pop (eight oz bottles, ten cents a bottle) and eat peanuts from the penny peanut machine was John Van Ryswyk. (Yep, that’s pure Dutch.) John, along with an assortment of farmers, liked to tell stories, solve world problems, and empty corn out of their pant cuffs (which I swept up).