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Whitey’s Esso was a full-service station.
All of them were.

The job was to simply pull-up to the pumps and wait.

Whitey would be informed by a runner, one of us,

Who’d rush to the Marconi Club
Just beyond the billboards to tell him

That a car was idling at the pumps.

Sometimes it was too late.

Whitey’s out-cold.
Not a problem at the Club

Named for an Italian hero. Whitey was Irish.

He had a face as red as a tomato
Drunk or not.

Usually, our friend Henry Casper
Took care of the Station

When Whitey was out to lunch
Just beyond the billboards.

One such time, staggering back
He fell to his face
On the pavement of Bedford Street

Splitting his nose at its bridge.

Esso didn’t give a shit
As long as somebody pumped.

Gasoline was the money-maker,
Not Whitey.

We’d pick him up and walk him
To the small enclosure of the station,

Carry him inside and clean him up

And as Henry pumped his gasoline,

One of us would call his wife in Tiverton,
Across the Fall River line to the south.

Then we’d wait with Whitey,
Who displayed his love for us with exaggerated
Gestural performances until his wife, always in heels,

Blazing red hair dyed to be that way,
showed-up in her snazzy new Mercury
To carry him home.

And Henry Casper pumped the ESSO gasoline.

And this would happen across the street from my house.

                                                              Quequechan