At Wally’s Filling Station Tootie McDaniels scanned the scene as Gene O. approached.
“Ahhh, sorry Ms. McD! You’re lookin for the younguns again. Steve gave them the morning off. With your honoring them as star pups, he decided to dish out some ‘preciation too and tasked ‘em with creating a new uniform for us all. They’ll be back after lunch.”
These young ones are Stan Verdillion and Rose Smith, two recent graduates of Tootie’s Quality Customer Service Program. Being so visible for a teen as to pump gas Downtown meant the jobs were coveted, and these two juniors of Warhaven High School understood this axiom of adolescence.
“Well,” Tootie smiling, “That’s what this training program is all about, although what’s the chicken and what’s the egg, appreciating the employee or the customer?”
Gene O. spread out his 10 fingers, lifting his arms out wide. “If I were stable master. Ms. McD, I’d say ‘praising the employee is the horse and what follows is an honoring of the customer. Of course, where would we be in business be without the consumer?”
Tootie tapped the roof of her car. “Well said, Gene O.”
“Of course,” Gene O. chucking, “both could occur simultany!”
“Indeed!”
Gene O. or rather Eugene Oliver Casino came to us in Warhaven about five years back and has been the evening shift at Wally’s since then. He lives alone Uptown in a duplex on Juniper Street.
Rumor has it he has a checkered past. What we in Warhaven don’t know, we invent. Over newcomers, our imaginations run wild!
Gene O. is quick-witted; some have speculated he was con artist in Denver or Kansas City. He is agile; one or two of us guess he might have been a dancer in Vegas or L.A. He is knowledgeable on many subjects; one trader in gossip believes, or says she believes, that Gene O. is a defrocked reference librarian from a monastery in The Bronx.
Gene O. is circumspect about his roots, as he has every right to be. He works hard and washes your windshield and checks your oil with a smile, which everyone at Wally’s does as standard practice. Gene O. is memorable because he kind of waltzes around your rig, conversing the whole time on subjects of your choice. Gene O. likes people and people like him.
When he gets going he truncates words, and we don’t know if he does it to be self-effacing, or if he’s practicing his stand up comic skills, or if maybe he just learned them that way. We just don’t know. Simultany is one of his favorites. So are unstand, apolgy, and cantankus. Gene O. might say in one of the repair bays, “Oh shucks, I unstand. This dang strut is being cantankus with me. I owe you an apolgy cause you want to be on the road, not stranded in the shop.”
Gene O. joined the Warhaven Volunteer Fire Department upon his arrival in town. He’s become a trusted engineer on the big red tender and is a steady-handed E.M.T., always cool as a cucumber. When he responds to an accident, the language stops and the medical expertise begins. Yet when there’s a structural fire, he’s a whirlwind of language, offering words of encouragement to his fellow firefighters. He’ll throw in self deprecating quips as well. “Last time I lifted that scuba gear up on my back, I got my spanner wrench twisted in my briefs!” And then there’s the sound advice for rookies, “Let me ‘spect your helmet strap and gloves, kid! You’re going into a hot one! Be sure that Nomex balaclava is tight. I went in cockamamie once and burned all the hair off my back!”
As an engineer he kept the water pressure up to snuff and knew where every tool was on the rig, a genuine Johnny-on-the-spot. When someone needed a fresh air tank, he had it in hand. If someone needed a saw or a pike pole, he was ready to pass it off. His eyes, all his senses seemed to be everywhere on any scene of an emergency. That’s why last year the Warhaven City Council named him Firefighter of the Year.
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