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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;wlwhittier, post: 10398466, member: 76316&quot;]It&#039;s 1957, a Mobil Oil service station onna NE corner of La Jolla Blvd an&#039; Pearl Street. Gas was 19 to 23 cents a gallon, depending on what the other 2 stations on the same cross-street were charging. I&#039;m a pump-jockey an&#039; lube assistant, making ~85 cents an hour, part time. Green Stamps were an unquestioned necessity for all purchases, even in affluent neighborhoods...I forget how many stamps were required to be offered for each dollar spent.</p><p>The man who sold them to the owner of the station drove a new Fleetwood Cadillac sedan, an&#039; had a diamond solitaire pinkie ring of well in excess of 2 carats. He was always well dressed an&#039; perfumed; he was at the time the fattest male I had ever seen, probably 300 pounds. He would drive onto the station every couple weeks, stop wherever he pleased, frequently blocking one of the only 2 pump islands. After heaving himself outta the Caddy, with a book of S&amp;H stamps in his hand (~1/2&quot; thick, 8&quot; X 10&quot;) he proceeded directly to what passed for an office in the small steel building that housed the cash register an&#039; the lube-bay, where the Boss would be waiting, unsmiling, with something like $300 in cash...the transaction took only seconds. The fat man, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, waddled back to his car, got in an&#039; left as if he were going to a fire...tho&#039; he only drove across the street to the other stations sharing the corner. As a kid, I was well aware of the level of scam I watched...but that was the game then, an it played out universally, as far as I know.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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