During my formative years, it was necessary to work. This was in the Great Depression which lasted from 1929 until war broke out in December, 1941. During that time, the place where one went to buy gas or to have a car lubricated was called a filling station. Later when wordsmiths took a leading role with the oil companies, there was an attempt to call filling stations, “service stations.” The curious point about this semantic change is that as time went on, the stations offered fewer and fewer services to the customer. At this writing, it may be true that only New Jersey provides an attendant to pump gas into your car. In the other states, car owners pump their own gas and do everything else.
Wiping off windshields, checking the air pressure in the tires or looking to see if the owner needs a quart of oil are lost arts. They simply are not done anymore, not even in New Jersey.
In those very difficult economic depression times, a job – any job – was a treasured possession. By making myself a pest around Carl Schroth’s Flying Red Horse Mobilgas station, the owner took me on full time in the summer and part time when school started. That was at age 15.
At that time, around 1936 or 1937, white wall tires were coming into vogue. If a young man did not have white sidewalls on whatever car he drove, it was believed that girls would ignore him. There may have been a lot of truth in this story of white sidewall tires opening the door to romance.
Schroth’s station was in Clayton, Missouri, the fanciest part of St. Louis and its suburbs. The people who patronized Carl Schroth were largely untouched by the Great Depression. Accordingly, those wealthy people drove Packards, Cadillacs, Lincolns and Rolls Royces. All of those cars were monstrous. Most of them had wheel wells in the front fenders to accommodate two spare tires. You must remember that many cars in those days had no trunk opening. In normal cars, the spare tire was attached to a holding device on the rear end of the car or in one or two cases, under the gas tank.
One of Schroth’s major customers, a Mr. Kukenmeister, owned two Rolls Royce touring cars. These were enormous cars. The year of manufacture was somewhere between 1929 and 1934. They had canvas roofs that could be folded back and placed on a space in back of the rear seat. And they each had six white sidewall tires which had to be cleaned spotlessly. When the weather was inclement, the cars had isinglass windows for all doors. There was a flap in the canvas below the isinglass where the driver could stick his arm out to signal turns. If his arm pointed down, the driver intended to make a left turn. When his arm pointed up, the driver intended to make a right turn. Putting the arm straight our meant the driver was slowing or was signaling a stop.
In those days, women seldom drove cars. Maybe a flapper might drive a little, but ordinarily, driving was left to the men or in the case of the two Rolls Royce touring cars, to chauffeurs.
The owner of the touring cars, Mr. Kukenmeister, was quite wealthy. Often he would drive one to Carl Schroth’s station with the second Rolls Royce being brought by a chauffer. They would wait for 1½ to 2 hours while the cars were lubricated and washed. The tops had to be brushed which took some time. Washing the cars was done by hand and with the owner standing nearby, much care had to be taken to avoid splashing the inside of the touring cars.
As the youngest member of Schroth’s staff, it fell to me to make the white sidewall tires sparkle and to clean the wire wheels. This was a formidable job. (See attachment) If the owner had scraped a curb, there would be a smudge on the whitewall tire which would be devilishly difficult to remove. When there were smudges, usually found on the tires on the right or curb side, steel wool would have to be employed. And we also had a copper wire brush that could be used on the worst smudges.
The wheels had to be cleaned between each spoke. A long brush was needed for the spoke wheels – all six of them on one car and six on the other. There were times when my hope would have been for the Kukenmeisters cars to go to the Shell station across the street.
The two well-mounted tires in the front fenders had to be taken off. And of course, these two tires had to be remounted. The 2001 Chryslers in use here have 17 inch tires. The Rolls Royce had tires of 19 or 20 inch diameter, which meant that there was a lot of scrubbing to do. But, a job was needed pretty badly, so the scrubbing took place. My memory tells me that there was no such practice as tipping for people working in the filling stations. In the final analysis, we were glad to have the job, even if it was a low level scrubbing position with no tipping.
From 1936 or 1937 to 1941 when it was my good fortune to leave the filling station business after a Monday to Friday job opened up with AT&T. It was also possible for me to work 10 hours on a Saturday and five hours on Sunday morning. This was at Harold Bauer’s Standard Oil Station on Hanley Road which was in another ritzy section of town. Harold took Sundays off and left the enterprise with an assistant named Mark. Mark took a dim view of me because, it might be supposed, AT&T was my main employer. Neither Harold nor Mark would ever permit me to drive a customer’s car around the driveway because they feared finding a grease spot on the customer’s upholstery.
There may have been a good reason to keep me out of being seated in a customer’s car. That reason was that both of them put me in charge of cleaning and re-lubricating the front wheel bearings on cars that came to Bauer’s for service. Bauer’s did not wash cars, so cleaning white sidewall tires was a thing of the past. But greasing front wheel bearings was probably a less pleasant job. This happened at 3000 mile intervals.
For one thing, the work had to be done outside in all kinds of weather. The wheel bearing job took place over a pit on the side of the station. There was no lift for this work outside. It was necessary to ease yourself down some steps at the front of the pit, and using a drop cord electric light, the work of greasing the underside of the chassis took place. Afterward, when the car was properly placed with a jack under one of the front wheels, it was possible to gain access to the front wheel bearings. First, the bearings had to be washed in gasoline or kerosene and dried and inspected for cracks. Then came the greasy part. The bearing would be placed in a special container filled with grease. When the top of the container was tightened, grease would be forced throughout the bearings and all its surfaces. Then the wheel had to be replaced. Very dirty work, but that is what had to be done. For 15 hours at Bauer’s, my pay was a big five dollars, but these were depression years and a half a sawbuck was very helpful.
Well, there you have a summary of my travails with white sidewall tires and front wheel bearings. Not very inspiring work, but it was a job.

TWO TONE SHOES

There was one other fad among men around this time and that was wearing two tone shoes in the summer months. Many fellows wore two tone shoes from Easter till about October.
Generally speaking, the instep was white and had to be cleaned with a whitening paste or polish. There were two kinds of shoes worn by men. The most popular was the wing tip where the brown or black leather extended from the cap back to the arch, leaving the instep white. Less popular was the straight across cap over the end of the shoe. Brown was by far the most popular color with black being a distant second.
Getting the shoes shined was a bit of a project. Men, particularly young men, took a good deal of pride in having their shoes shined in those days. It was almost unheard of to get a haircut without a shoeshine. Many barber shops had two bootblacks working regularly.
Shining the shoes at home was far from easy. The wingtip shoes were much worse than the straight cap models. Trying to keep the brown or black paste and the brush off the white instep was almost impossible to do. On ordinary shoes, the paste is applied and brushing follows. After those operations take place, then the shoes are brought to a shine using a special cloth.
With two-tone shoes, the best that could be done is to apply the paste and to rub vigorously with the cloth on the brown or black leather. If the two-tone shoes were taken to a boot black, the owner would almost always be told to leave the shoes so that they could be worked on when the bootblack had a slack period. Whereas, shining regular one tone shoes in a barber shop, for example, would cost 25 cents or as much as 50 cents, working on two-tone shoes could cost anywhere up to two dollars or a few cents more. Remember now, we are talking about 1940 prices when the Depression was still with the American public.
When the young swain back in those pre-World War II days set out to impress a young lady, it was essential that his two-tone shoes be shined and that his white sidewall tires be white. There is no way to know now more than 63 years later, whether girls were properly impressed. As a completely unbiased, objective evaluator of mores, it is my impartial belief that young men who wore unshined shoes and/or those who let their white sidewall tires look unkempt, were courting romantic disaster. My two-tone shoes and my whitewalls were always spotless. After all these years, I don’t remember if those facts ever resulted in my hitting a home run in the romance department. It was my thought to give it my best effort.
Ah, but that was long ago. Today, young men pay no such attention to their shoes or to their tires. Perhaps this is progress, but as far as this impartial, objective, unbiased evaluator of public mores, the jury is still out.
E. E. CARR
December 27, 2003
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Oh man, maybe Pop somehow missed the rise of metrosexuality but god knows my brother cared more about his collection of Nikes than he cared about pretty much anything else for a while there. And while the tires themselves are no longer particularly important, ornate hubcaps (rims) are a big deal to a lot of cultures. So in some ways, shoes and tires are definitely both still a big deal among the dating population.