with Lindie
Looking back to when I was a young girl, Livingston had a lot of full-service gas stations. In fact, on the one corner of 2nd and Lewis, there were actually three. The last one standing was Hasty’s Texaco, where our Food Resource Center presently stands. In 1952, it was simply known as the HAC service station. And on G Street and Park, where All Service Tire is today, was the Subway Service Center. There was an actual subway walkway that allowed the men working at the railroad shops to go underneath Park Street. Park Street was the original highway through town until 1962, when the interstate highway was built over on Harvat’s flats. The Subway Gas Station was later renamed to G Street Texaco, and when my Grampa, Floyd Goddard, retired from the railroad, he would hang out there and volunteer to check oil and wash windshields while the Texaco employees filled the tanks with fuel.
An interesting and humorous story happened one day. Because Grampa’s hearing was so bad from having been a machinist’s helper for the railroad all of his working career (before OSHA came along and required ear protection when working on the machines). On this one particular day, a woman pulled in to the station and asked Grampa if they had any rest rooms. Grampa thought she said, “Do you have a whisk broom?” to which Grampa replied, “No, but if you step out of the car, I can blow it out with the air hose.” Immediately the woman rolled up her car window and drove away. Grampa didn’t understand why she drove off, but old man Amsk witnessed the conversation and told Grampa what she really said and together they both had a good, hardy laugh.