"Miz Snyder," he asked the woman who opened the door, "can Junior go with me to get some kerosene?"

       The woman turned and called:  "Junior.  Come 'ere.  Boweaver's here."

       Boweaver sat on the steps and waited.  In a moment Junior came out.

       "Can you go with me, Junior?"

       "Yeah," said Junior.  "Mama don't care."

       They headed up the road to the service station.  The sun was down, but the macadam highway was warm to their feet.

       Boweaver lived in a seven-room two-story house, with hand-pumped water and kerosene lamps.  That was why he had the can.

       The big old 1800s house had rented for five dollars a month in 1932, but with the New Deal and the new owner looking for better things, the rent went up to seven-and-a-half a month in 1934.

       After paying that much rent and scrounging around for enough cash to keep fish in the salt-barrel out back, and a sack of potatoes and corn meal in the kitchen, there wasn't much left for little luxuries like reading lamps.

       Making the oil shortage worse, the old folks would sit around in the yard on summer nights and talk.  To do this, they had to do something about the mosquitoes, a plague they fought with an old chamber-pot filled with rags sprinkled with a dab of kerosene.

       They'd light this contrivance and try to fix it so it wouldn't burn ~ just smoke up the place and pester the mosquitoes.

       They'd sit around the smoke pot and the women would dip snuff and talk and spit, and the men would talk and smoke and chew tobacco and spit, and they'd burn up all the kerosene in Boweaver's can.

       "Junior," said Boweaver, "I tell mama:  I need seven cents for one gallon or 14 cents for two gallons, 'cause the man at the service station don't like to sell five cents' worth of kerosene.

       "She says:  Boweaver, five cents is all I got.  Go get five cents' worth of kerosene.

       "And I hate that old man.  I been around his store and heard that man talk enough to know he's mean.  He's the meanest-acting and meanest-talking old man I ever saw.

       "He don't have any young 'uns and he don't ever smile.  All he ever does is smoke Camel cigarettes and fuss.   I think he gets his greatest pleasure in life just from browbeating and belittling young 'uns like me."

       Junior grunted agreement as they passed the Pepsi plant near the intersection.

       This was about where Boweaver usually would get the shivers and almost lose his nerve, thinking about what the service-station man would say or do when he asked for five cents' worth of kerosene.

       Selling a nickel's worth required fastening a little metal shim up at the top of the piston on the kerosene stand, where it was hooked to the pump handle, to make it stop two cents short of a gallon.  Boweaver had seen that shim go up a thousand times, and had heard the old man cuss a thousand times.

       The service-station man was leaning in his door smoking a Camel.

       Boweaver knew the man had seen him coming with his can, because he turned and went back in behind the counter and tried to act as if he hadn't seen anybody.

       Boweaver and Junior stood in the open door until the old man finally gave up and looked their way.

       "What you want, boy?"

       "Five cents' worth of kerosene."

       The service-station man picked up the pump-shim and swore.

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Historic old store at Menola has a kerosene stand out front