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They cope with swindles, pests and grouches — and love every minute of it!
by JULES FRANCE
TAKE it from a guy who saw Saipan, Leyte, Okinawa and the rest of the Pacific from an aircraft carrier, working out a living from behind your •wn gas pumps jangles the nerves. But Ben Alexander, who might well bear the sobriquet "Mr. Filling Station," was hypnotized by a fliwer at the age of six, and has been sticking his head under motor hoods ever since.
He cracked the mysteries of carburetion and differentials during high school vacations when he was paid $9 a week to hand'pump gas and rake gravel at a Union Oil station. The outbreak of war a few years later found him still selling gas for Union Oil — but at a microphone, as an' nouncer for their radio show.
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Then Ben enlisted in the Navy. On his return home, he found that the announcer who had pinch-hit for him had been signed for another year. So, with three of his ex-navy buddies, Ben bought a Union Oil station on lease, and went back to selling oil the hard way.
And, brother, it is the hard way!
APART from the usual gas station pests, there are the swindle artists to cope with. It took Ben's boys' time — and costly experience — to be wary of the man who buys gas with a twenty-dollar bill, then discovers he has a five when the attendant returns with his change. In the confusion and fast talk of rejuggling the transaction, the short change operator drives off with a full tank, and $20 profit.
A new racket pops up every week. There was the girl who drove in with the tearful story of no gas or money to meet her husband coming into San Diego on a tramp steamer. If she