I HAVE the fondest of memories taking a trip to the petrol station with my father when he needed to fill up the car, although thinking about it, he never actually filled up, opting instead for a set number of gallons.
Around 1960, the local garage, or for that matter any garage, was fascinating to me because as a young lad I was fixated on cars and everything to do with them. I still am.
Mr Denney’s garage was a typical 1950s establishment. All white and blue. The workshops with their inspection pits, walls full of tools and servicing apparatus were forever busy, but in front of them the forecourt, on Redcar’s busy Esplanade, had the usual three or four petrol pumps.
Mr Denney favoured Esso, which was “the Sign of Happy Motoring”.
I don’t think we ever just drove up, got the fuel and drove off. My father would get out of the car and chat to Mr Denney. I remember him as a portly man in a white overall. When I was eight years old, seeing my fascination with cars, he promised me a job when I grew up.
He would dispense the petrol into our Ford Prefect. I was fascinated by the pistol grip nozzle and was dying to have a go. Little did I know I’d be doing it myself eventually when attendants disappeared.
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The other thing I recall vividly was watching the clock-like hands whizz round the dial on the petrol pump. These days we take for granted that the pump is telling you how much you’re dispensing in monetary terms but back in the day, there was a challenging calculation which I think was often rounded up or down, given a halfpenny might have been involved.
I recall small pencils extracted from overall pockets and sums scribbled on scraps of paper.
My father always paid cash and there was always some change. Back then, I had no concept of how much petrol cost. All I knew was there was a dark art in finishing on an exact gallon, with the hands of the dial both at twelve o’clock, so to speak.
Occasionally, if Mr Denney was in a deeper conversation with my Dad, I would wander towards the wide-open doors of the workshop and gaze in, fascinated at the “doings” of the mechanics and the “innards” of motor cars. A heady aroma of oil wafted into my nostrils and a barrage of banging, whirring and grinding assaulted my ears.
On a few occasions Mr Denney would take me into the workshop to peer down into the pits and up at the underneath of a car on the ramp. To say I was fascinated was an understatement.
There was, to the left of the forecourt, a showroom, in which the latest family Ford was displayed. New cars were fascinating, too, and I’d press my nose to the window to take in as much as I could.
Then one day, as we called in for some Esso, an entirely different car was showing itself off. It was a Ferrari, in Redcar, in 1961!
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My shelves full of the Observer’s Book of Automobiles meant it wasn’t a random identification. It was a Ferrari. My recollection is it was green, which isn’t a regular Ferrari colour. Whatever it was doing there it wasn’t there long. It was a notable highlight in my car-spotting list.
We moved away from Marske to East Anglia in 1963 and the thrill of a visit to Denney’s in Redcar was no more, but if anyone asked me what I was going to do when I grew up I’d happily tell them Mr Denney had promised me a mechanic’s job. I never did take him up on his offer.
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