To my dad, and Frank's Texaco of New Brunswick, Canada.
submitted by daughter, Kathy
My father worked many jobs as a mechanic, mind you he was one of the best around! That's no lie I can honesty say, people are still wanting him to be their head mechanic on their sportsman race cars.
My father got tired of working for other people, so he decided to take a chance and run his own business. For 20 years he and my mother took care of the business. My mother was the book keeper, and my sister and I were the little hunters in the business trying to get a free pop and a bag of chips, which we usally did get.
Dad had different mechanics hired to work for him and a couple of them were really cute. Well I thought they were anyway. I remember one of the mechanics threw a cashew peanut at me, and believe it or not I still have the cashew in my little treasure box that my grandmother gave to me when I was about 12 years old.
I remember playing on the hoist, the air piston ones. I would sit on it and my sister would put me way up in the air. Then she would laugh and leave me up there. My dad did not approve of this but we did it anyway.
Dad would let us get into a car that he had to work on that had to be put up on the hoist. He always said, "I am going to be working on this for awhile are you sure you want to still go up?" Yes! I would say. It was so fun looking down out of the car window seeing everyone walking down below.
One day there was a man that had been drinking away too much, my father had to work on his car. He told the man to get out and sit in the waiting room. But the drunken soul didn't listen and wanted to stay in his car and sleep it off. The ol'fart must have woken up and forgot that he was away up on the hoist and that dad was under his car working on it. Dad said the next thing he knew he heard the car door open and seen a leg coming out of the car and then a thud. It happened so quickly that Dad couldn't say "WHOA" in time. The man was ok. I wish I had of seen that.
I got my first job there when I was 16 years old. I continued to work there until I was 19, then I moved on to trade school.
I want to send this story to my parents and thank them for all the memories and fun that I had at that ol'garage.
The garage isn't there anymore, about 15 years ago it caught on fire and burnt to the ground. As I was driving into town, I seen black smoke rising into the sky and thought to myself - "What's Burning!"
It was the garage. My father wasn't the owner at this time, but I still felt a bit sad about seeing it go up in flames. One thing for sure, the fire destroyed the garage but it didn't take away my memories.