When I was approaching the age of eighteen I started my first job working as an attendant in a gasoline station in New Jersey. I was simultaneously encouraged and depressed as I realized I had made an impression on my boss merely by showing up on time and following his simple instructions. It made me realize how easy it would be to succeed at anything I set my mind to. It was also a sobering indication of the quality of the work force I had just become a part of.

The station was one of a chain owned by Leon Hess who also owned the New York Jets. I never met Mr. Hess or any of the Jets but I did meet Bill Bradley once. The ex New York Knickerbocker was campaigning for his first term in the United States Senate at the time and needed to use the bathroom in Mr. Hess's gas station. I told him where it was. He shook my hand and hurried off to use the facilities. Six months later he became the junior senator from New Jersey.

Hess gas stations had no garages or any repair service. We had a pump that charged a quarter for air and a garden hose that we used to fill radiators for free. What we did was fill cars with gasoline and motor oil and therefore we referred to ourselves as a filling station rather than using the more common expression "service station". I was promoted to an assistant manager after one month and fired after my fifth month in a purge that resulted in twelve out of thirteen employees being let go. As a historical footnote that was the year of the gas crisis and the price of our gasoline rose from fifty six cents a gallon to seventy nine cents during my brief tenure. By the end of my time there, odd and even rationing days had begun and stories of rioting and shootings in some stations were starting to circulate.

Shortly after losing that job I moved up to live in Massachusetts. I had been there over two months and still hadn't found any work. I was getting desperate. It was then that my friend Christine offered to help. She asked me what experience I'd had and I told her I'd been a manager at a filling station. Christine seemed very encouraged. She said that she had a friend who owned a restaurant and she'd talk to him for me. At the time I didn't understand why having pumped gasoline into peoples cars would qualify me to work in a restaurant but I decided to keep my mouth shut. I was happy to take whatever help I could get and if it made sense to her that was good enough for me. She introduced me to her friend that evening and the next day I was a dishwasher at the Hungry U restaurant earning two dollars and sixty five cents for every hour that I worked.

When I saw Christine a few weeks later I thanked her again and asked her why she had chosen to bring me to the Hungry U in the first place. She said it was because I had told her that I'd managed a restaurant. I was shocked.

"I never told you that." I said.

"Sure you did." she returned. "You told me that you had managed at the filling station."

"That's right, I was a manager at the filling station, but what's that have to do with anything?" I was still perplexed.

Christine gave me a very peculiar look.

"What do you mean what does that have to do with anything? If you can manage a restaurant you can work in one."

The logic of that statement was irrefutable except for one thing.

"I've never managed a restaurant before," I said. "I've never even worked in one."

Christine looked at me as if she was trying to decide which one of us was crazy.

"Didn't you tell me that you were a manager at The Fillin' Station on Main street?" she asked, pronouncing every word very carefully.

"No the station I worked at was in New Jersey," I explained. "I pumped gas for about a month before I got promoted."

Christine started laughing out loud, giving me cause to doubt her mental health.

"I thought you worked up at The Fillin' Station here in town." she was still chuckling.

"Christine, whether I worked for a gas station in New Jersey or one right around the corner I still don't understand what that has to do with working at the Hungry U."

"The Fillin' Station isn't a gas station," smiled Christine. "It's a very popular local diner."

Thus began a career in restaurants that lasted over twenty years.