In the 1960s I took a job with Humble Oil and Refining Co., which later became Exxon. After my extensive training was assigned to a retail service station territory. I was assigned to a territory of 23 retail service stations in east Dallas.
Things went well until Shell chose to enter the local market and ‘pirated’ away three of my best managers. This total attack was all over the Dallas and Fort Worth area.
The result was Shell swept up the entire supply of potential managers.

Since I had to keep all 23 of my stations open, I was quite busy hiring driveway salesmen to keep the clients in my area properly serviced. I was lucky in being able to find honest, hard-working men to help keep three stations open. You might imagine how busy I was besides managing three stations and still managing and training at another twenty stations.

This meant I did some training on the run!If a service station attendant made a good sales presentation, I saw he was rewarded. Often, I would buy four top of the line tires, even though my car really did not need them because the salesman did an excellent job selling them.
The same goes for batteries, oil changes, and such.

Some of the older, more experienced dealers in my territory knew I was under a lot of pressure, and would press me for more service, or equipment.
I didn’t mind if I got quid pro quo.
On one occasion I was present at a dealer exchange, where my old Humble manager was leaving, and I was to install new management. The station was equipped with a drive-on car hoist. My men had just finished change the oil in a customer’s car, The lift was not a frame lift, the car was in neutral and began rolling backwards off the ramp. There were a lot of cars in the area, and a hand for the old manager saw this car rolling off the rack, and his older, restored car was in line to have a collision. He stands between his car and the vehicle that was about to collide with his car, and the result is he receives two broken lower legs.

My car was the most outside and so I put him in my car and rushed him to the nearest emergency room.

There was a management meeting to discuss what should be done. I could have been fired for this accident that was accredited to my crew because they were responsible for not properly securing the car being serviced. Some were for my termination, and others were not. It did not matter what they decided because Humble would probably be sued in any case.
But the final decision was I had done the right thing by getting this injured man to medical attention, acting quickly, doing what was the right thing to do!

Overall, I learned a lot about dealing with both employees and customers. I spent a lot of money painting, upgrading agent stations where needed. I had the authority to spend with my signature alone whatever was needed. The color was changed from a buff tan, to white, red, and blue.

I made sure to horse trade with my dealers. When they asked me to pay for some change, I would ask for something in return. It was standard procedure for all agent stations to have no condom machines in their rest rooms. Dealer stations were not under the same rules, but if one asked for exchange, I asked they remove all such machines in return.

One iron clad rule we followed was to fire any employee who stole from the cash register. Not only terminate him but call all the other Humble managers to tip them off to avoid hiring him. We hoped this forced the culprit out of town.

I want to mention the reason I resigned after one year. My sales manager and I had made a tour of all the stations for which I would be responsible, and we made a list on a legal sized notepad. It was a very long list.

He said, “If you get all this done in a year, you will get a raise!” Some I ‘spared no expense, or effort to complete that list.’ I got it done in late November, but had heard nothing from this manager, so I called him.

He said he would have to call Humble headquarters in Houston. He got back later and said Houston said there would be no raises that year, not only no, but Hell no! That ripped it for me! I began looking for a job immediately and wound up with a division of American Cyanamid, called Lederle Laboratories as a drug salesman.

Now, being a native Texan and our families mostly blue-collar workers in some way working in the oil patch, I had an uncle who was a manager for a division of Conoco Co.
He said, ‘Bob is crazy for leaving Humble. He is driving around in a suit and an air-conditioned car, working for the best oil company in the business, and he quits! He is crazy! Uncle Doug did not know I got an automatic raise upon joining, but a much better chance of being promoted!

My work ethic had been so strong with Humble, when I applied to Lederle, I was winning sales contests regularly, and in about four years promoted. In less than ten years, I was the highest paid district manager in the company! Just Sayin…RJS

In the early 1950s, before I graduated from high school, we would saddle up our horses and ride around the countryside just for recreation. One of our destinations would be to cross the Red River and explore the Oklahoma side.
The Red River at times can be a raging flow of high water, perhaps close to a mile across, but in the summertime, this same river would be much lower, in fact it would be less than knee deep to our horses. Once in Oklahoma we became aware of a difference in farming and animal breeding techniques.
On the Texas side, all animals owned by a farmer or rancher were kept penned up, in proper fences. In Oklahoma, it was the opposite. There farmers fenced their crops to keep the local animals out. As one example, we noticed literally hundreds of hogs, and baby pigs wandering around. It appeared difficult just what farmer any one animal belonged. Their rooting and digging had the farmland dug up and scattered. I suppose there was some mutually satisfactory method of determining ownership when ‘hog killing’ time arrived, which on our side was usually about October, or after the first winter freeze.
We rode on and about four or five miles there was a country store, which appeared no different that our local store. Inside, we received a small shock. All the soft drinks were strange, of different brands, other than Coca Cola! After buying a soft drink, we wandered back outside and over to where several men were sitting on a large truck tire. Upon getting close and greeting them, it was a shock. They were drinking beer and shooting dice! It was a shock simply because we had gone to church that morning and would have never be found drinking or gambling on a Sunday.
They were friendly and invited us to join them. We declined to participate in shooting dice or drink a beer. Now all this was not more than five miles from our homes back in Texas. After thinking it over, it made sense for them to do as they pleased. It wasn’t for us to decide what they should drink or games they wanted to play; it wasn’t the same back on our side of the river.
Later, in a conversation with an older boy who had been born in our community but whose family had moved away just before the war, he said there were several stills producing moonshine in Bulcher, whereas there were none when I was growing up there. So, I guess it was an economic climate change that occurred, shutting down one activity and encouraging another. In fact, I have never been aware of even one still operating there. I guess if I knew about there being one in existence, so would law enforcement who would shut it down. Or else, it is well concealed.
I know that during the war, there was a campaign to keep people from talking about vital defense information, “Loose Lips sinks Ships! It can also sink stills! Just Sayin…RJS