Tank Wagon Days

My most vivid memories of my father are riding along with him on his Standard Oil Company tank wagon delivering gasoline to farms in the Cedar Vale area. In the summer, when school was not in session, I would ride with him several times each week. When I was too short to see out the front windshield Dad put can of axle grease on the passenger’s seat for me to sit on. Sometimes on deserted country roads he would take me on his lap so I could “drive the truck” while he worked the pedals. What a feeling of power for a small boy to be in charge of that huge truck with hundreds of gallons of gas in the tanks behind. Later, when I was learning to drive, that early experience stood me in good stead, since guiding a vehicle was a skill I had learned many years before.

Each stop along his route was a new adventure for me. Sometimes I was invited in by the farm wife to have a piece of pie or some bread and jelly while my dad carried pairs of five-gallon pails of gas to lift up over his head and pour into the farmer’s tank. Delivering gas in the early days was very hard work, but in later years Dad had a pump and hose arrangement installed so he could use the truck’s engine to pump the fuel. There was a second small gear shift inside the truck that engaged a “power takeoff” to activate the pump. The fuel was metered with what looked like a miniature filling station pump and Dad’s job was to watch the meter and be sure and cut off the pump before the tank overflowed. He missed on more than one occasion, and there would be a sudden flood.

Sometimes a farm would have a friendly dog or two that I could play with while waiting for Dad to finish his work and visit with the farmer. Sometimes there would be kids my age and I would join them in whatever they were doing. On more than one farm there was a girl who would take me behind the barn or to her room for a few stolen kisses and a different sort of play. I grew to look forward to some of the stops Dad would make, anticipating what activity might be in store there. I was quite precocious in developing a way with the girls while riding along with my dad.

My dad set a leisurely pace for his life. He always took time to visit at each farm and the conversations would seem to go on for hours, although that would depend on how interesting my activities were. If I was having a good time the visit seemed all too short.

We would often make unscheduled stops when we were in the neighborhood of a good fishing or swimming hole. Dad had two long cane poles on the truck and we would walk down to someplace on Cedar Creek and catch a few sunfish to throw back. A fishing break was never a time for serious fishing, since it would be too long before we would be home and the fish would spoil. There were a few favorite places along Cedar Creek that were not too deep and where the bottom was solid rock. We would park the truck and take off our clothes for skinny dipping to cool us off. Another favorite break was climbing up Lookout Mountain to visit the cave. I left secret messages in the cracks there and would see if they were still there when we next visited. My mother thought that Dad was pretty lazy because he took all that time to have fun, but those are my most treasured memories of riding with him.

Dad would regale me with stories of his growing up on the farm and his early days running a filling station in Sedan, Kansas. The filling station stories were my favorites, since there were a group of men who hung out at Dad’s station and they were always playing practical jokes on each other. They all called each other by funny nicknames. Two of my favorite nicknames for my father are “Whipsnade” and “Whipple.” An example of a practical joke would be placing mustard oil on one of the chairs in the station and getting one of the guys to sit down in it. That would send the poor victim running for the nearest rest room to clean the noxious stuff off his bum. To hear my dad tell about the shenanigans of the group at the service station was great fun because he was clearly having a good time telling the stories. When my father was happy, which was quite often, he would do a little soft-shoe dance that he got by mimicking Fred Astaire in the movies. He was also quite fond of singing and we would sing a lot of the old songs he knew at the top of our lungs while driving along through the countryside.

My dad was a tolerant, easy-going man who wished no one harm. He was satisfied with his lot in life. When we were out on the tank wagon he was a lot of fun to be with, but he seemed to shut down as soon as we got home. Mother was what you would call “upwardly mobile.” She was not satisfied with our lot and worked nonstop to improve it. I can say that I have lived my life much more along the lines of my mother, but now, since retirement, I am aiming to be much more like my father.