Well folks its finally Christmas Eve, I hope, if you didn’t enjoy the darker side of my Christmas stories, you were at least moved by their situations and sadness. Today, my life is good, I have a wonderful wife, a loving family and beautiful grandchildren, my Christmases are bright and happy. It is important to remember stories such as mine and those even more dire continuing to occur throughout the World. We must do what we can to help alleviate the misery and misfortune of others. It sometimes requires more than merely wishing someone a Merry Christmas. It requires that we act to help alleviate the pain and sadness of the sick,the homeless and the hungry. Tomorrow we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus, this is the reason for the season. On behalf of myself and my family I wish you one and all, the Greatest Christmas ever and a Prosperous New Year, May the Lord God Bless you and keep you safe.
My final Christmas story is not dark or sad, although it surely felt like it was at the time. I overcame and solved the situation, I was home on Christmas Eve, (if a wee bit later than planned) ready to prepare the stockings and presents for the following morning. Wow!! Christmas is indeed the most wonderful time of the year. And for all the reason I have blogged about thru December.
Way back on Christmas Eve in 1972 I worked as the manager of the Tecumseh Rd Kmart 
Auto Centre and Gas Bar in Windsor Ontario. In those days the store was open from 10am to 10pm six days a week. On Christmas Eve it was only open 10am to 6 pm. I went into work that morning as usual, happy and expecting a fairly quiet day. Not many people would be looking for brake jobs-alignments-oil changes etc. Even inside the store my dept was not going to be very busy, just a few last minute shoppers rushing around looking for a stocking stuffers and such. It was a wet and rainy day, so much for a White Christmas. The morning passed with very little work, a couple of minor jobs in the shop, a couple of purchases at the cash register. Around 2pm an old Chev drove up to the doors, the driver said he needed a tune up the car was running rough. We brought him in did the tune up installing eight new spark plugs, points condenser and rotor and a new air filter. By three o’clock he was backing out of the bay smiling and happy. By 4.30pm things were really quiet and I was about to let the mechanics go home early, That was when my tune up customer walked back in !. He told me the car was working great then just after he filled up with gas he got about half way across the parking lot and it stalled, and now refuses to start. I sent the mechanics to push the car into the bay so we could check it out. I was quite sure it was nothing to do with the tune up. In the garage the engine turned over but would not fire. One of the guys poured gas into the carb and the engine immediately came to life but only for a moment. We were scratching our heads trying to decide what to try next when another motorist walked into the shop, same problem. Ah Ha says I, must be bad gas, both customers told me they had just filled up at our gas bar. Fortunately the gas bar out at the front of the parking area had a Shell Logo, so people did not connect it to K Mart Auto Centre. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them either!! they were just pleased that we were helping them. I immediately phone the gas bar to tell them to close up not to sell any more gas. The young fellow running the pumps answered the phone saying, Oh glad you called, I think we have water in our regular underground gas storage tank, I have four stalled cars out here, what shall I do. Ugh!!! six cars with water in their gas tanks and its already 5pm. The boys in the shop had by now managed to siphon off the gas from the Chev and added 5 gals of high test that we’d brought over from the gas bar. The car started first time and the happy owner asked me what he owed? Nothing sir, we will bill the Shell people (just a wee white lie). One car down five to go, but the problems increased as we found different shaped tanks that we couldn’t siphon completely empty. Why North American cars didn’t have drain plugs on the tanks was something I thought I should bring to the attention of the Big Three once I got out of this dreadful mess. The boys had to remove the tanks on two of the cars in order to drain them properly. Two others cars we were able to lower the tank enough and remove the gas gauge sending unit then siphon through the hole. Finally around six thirty pm the last car drove off and we all breathed a sigh of relief. But wait for it!! now I had another major problem. While draining the gas off we had used four empty 40 gal oil drums to store the old gas in.
I got the guys to screw the caps on tight and we wheeled roll and wrestled the heavy barrels out side the garage doors and stood them upright against the store wall. However I realized I couldn’t leave them there over the holidays they were a dangerous fire hazard. What to do???The store was close up by this time and the security guard was on my back to lock up the garage. I told him to go — well you can guess where I told him to go. I phoned the nearby fire station and explained my situation to the person who answered the phone. He wasn’t interested, said it was Christmas Eve (like I didn’t know) and he was very busy and this wasn’t the responsibly of the fire department. I couldn’t believe what he had just told me, we had highly inflammable barrels of gas just sitting in the Kmart parking lot waiting for a cigarette butt or match to set it off and it wasn’t his responsibility??? Again I was scratching my head, who do I call now? the police of course. I call the Windsor Police Dept and this time the person answering took my situation seriously and suggested I call the Fire Marshall. He gave me the number and I called, it was now 7.30pm, after a moment the Marshall came on the line, he didn’t sound pleased to be disturbed on this particular evening. Nevertheless he did take my concerns seriously and assured me he would have the barrels picked up within the hour. True to his word a local fire chief arrived along with a truck fitted with a tailgate lift. Ten minutes and the barrels were loaded and gone. My quiet day was over! maybe, I locked up and headed for the front entrance of the darkened store to go home. The security guy who I had earlier told to – you know what, wasn’t pleased to see me and took his time getting around to turning off the alarm and letting me out. I wished him a Merry Christmas as I disappeared into the night. I arrived home at 9 pm tired and dirty reeking of gasoline. Just in time to hang my stocking up for Santa, I had surely been a good boy today???
That was probably my worse KMart Christmas Eve ever.
God Bless and a Very Happy Christmas.
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