Not a blog more like another pier banyan tree, a place to come & sit for a little while & wait for something fun to happen. A place for all the greezers, candyasses, Halloween egg throwers, former Publix bagboys & dirt bike riders to kill a little time until Halloween. Just like the good old days, wait around for a couple hours until you could find some geezer to buy you beer...
Ahhhh, Jim's Sunoco (Jim Panipinto). For years my folks wouldn’t buy gas anywhere else. My dad liked that he could "dial up your own grade of gas" from "190" to "260" right at the same pump. My mom always said that Jim had the nicest smile. When Jim and his wife Ginny opened "Jim’s Auto Sales MG/Austin-Healey" in 1966 (next to Andy's Pit BarBQ and the Flame Lounge) I was hired as "the kid with the broom". It was my very first "real job" with a time card and everything ($1.75 an hour after school and on Saturdays). Jim was a great salesman and mechanic too along with Merle, and Helmut, plus Russ Wimer ran the body shop. My passion for cars was fueled working there and even though I was the “lackey” and the target of their good natured pranks, they always treated me fairly. Even the Saturday afternoon they all went to the “Flame” and left me to drop the engine out of a Corvair. I got done removing the engine and then went to the showroom to “play”. I jumped in the white Austin-Healy 3000 and fired it up and was having a great time revving the engine not realizing I was filling the showroom with rich black soot. It covered everything . . . the Healey, the white MGB, the white Austin sedan, the white tile floor (get it? white + soot . . .). Then I hear them coming back from their “meeting” at the Flame. There was no way out!!! I was soooo busted. (there was still soot in the air that had not yet settled ) I had coated everything in the showroom with a mantle of black. Jim gave me a menacing look then looked at the guys then back at me and said “ have you learned a lesson here?” Then he lit his pipe, smiled the smile my mom liked, and he and the guys broke out into laughter that haunts me to this day. He didn’t fire me but I sure did learn a lesson . . . and it took about a week to get all that @#$%* soot cleaned up.
Ahhhh, Jim's Sunoco (Jim Panipinto). For years my folks wouldn’t buy gas anywhere else. My dad liked that he could "dial up your own grade of gas" from "190" to "260" right at the same pump. My mom always said that Jim had the nicest smile. When Jim and his wife Ginny opened "Jim’s Auto Sales MG/Austin-Healey" in 1966 (next to Andy's Pit BarBQ and the Flame Lounge) I was hired as "the kid with the broom". It was my very first "real job" with a time card and everything ($1.75 an hour after school and on Saturdays). Jim was a great salesman and mechanic too along with Merle, and Helmut, plus Russ Wimer ran the body shop. My passion for cars was fueled working there and even though I was the “lackey” and the target of their good natured pranks, they always treated me fairly. Even the Saturday afternoon they all went to the “Flame” and left me to drop the engine out of a Corvair. I got done removing the engine and then went to the showroom to “play”. I jumped in the white Austin-Healy 3000 and fired it up and was having a great time revving the engine not realizing I was filling the showroom with rich black soot. It covered everything . . . the Healey, the white MGB, the white Austin sedan, the white tile floor (get it? white + soot . . .). Then I hear them coming back from their “meeting” at the Flame. There was no way out!!! I was soooo busted. (there was still soot in the air that had not yet settled ) I had coated everything in the showroom with a mantle of black. Jim gave me a menacing look then looked at the guys then back at me and said “ have you learned a lesson here?” Then he lit his pipe, smiled the smile my mom liked, and he and the guys broke out into laughter that haunts me to this day. He didn’t fire me but I sure did learn a lesson . . . and it took about a week to get all that @#$%* soot cleaned up.
ReplyDeleteOops I got to rambling again. Later ,
Seagate Homeboy