#photography #filmphotography #retrobosak
Roll eps28, cont.: Blue Jay, California (July 1966)
1/
This unprepossessing photo marks a pivotal point in my history. I'll have quite a bit to say about it in the comments that follow.
2/
My mother was not a year-round resident of Blue Jay, but she owned the trailer and lived there summer and weekends. Her presence on the mountain went back a long way; her father had a cabin in Crestline, and in the early 1950's she had worked as a waitress in nearby Lake Arrowhead, where we lived at the time. She had learned as a teacher to be outgoing, and she could charm the spots off the proverbial leopard. So of course she was quite well known and liked by everyone in the village.
3/
One of the primary businesses in Blue Jay, along with Jensen's and the post office, was the Union 76 gas station and garage. It was not just the only gas station around, it was also the only general garage and tire and battery store (all Union 76 products, of course). If you had any kind of urgent car problem, you ended up at the 76 station. My mother talked the owner, Jim Willis, into giving me a job.
4/
Since I didn't know how to drive, had nowhere else to stay, and lived five thousand feet above any other likely job (versus a three-minute walk down to the gas station), this was a major piece of good luck.
I did well enough that eventually I was made responsible for closing the station up at night. But not right away; as the newest and youngest member of Jim's team, I was given the two worst jobs in the place: cleaning the restrooms and repairing tires.
5/
Now, you haven't really met the American public until you've worked cleaning the restrooms in a gas station. But the tire repair was worse, and even more so in the winter. There were very few 4WD or AWD cars back then, so most vehicles (even semis) were required to mount chains when it snowed (which was often; the snow was what people came for). There's nothing like working down on the ground outdoors in the winter removing and reinstalling chains caked with ice.
6/
In the photo we began with, Mike, delighted to turn over the job to the new low man in the pecking order, is demonstrating the way to put air back into a truck tire, which holds a lot more pressure than a car tire. If the split ring holding it together isn't on just right, the "split rim" will come apart explosively and take big pieces of him with it. Here it's being held under the arms of one of the hydraulic lifts to prevent injury in case this happens.
