Mill Park Pure Oil Gas Station

Next to this ' Pure Oil Station', as I liked to call it back then, was the Edgemont Free Will Baptist Church, where I thought Hell was the only end for me, due to the preaching of Joe Ange and Ronald Creech.  They could really get you caught up into the right and wrong of living.

R.A.Glenn was my Sunday school teacher for awhile and had me to kneel down and pray with him before I went into the Marine Corps.

He was a wonderful man and teacher, but Neil Mixon and myself would oftentimes sneak out of his class and go to the Pure Oil Station for a Pepsi.  R.A. was killed at IBM in later years by a disgruntled employee and R.A. was only trying to help the man.

One day I took a deep breath and went into the Pure Oil Station with a quarter, hoping to purchase my first condom in the pretty machine they had on the wall.  Just as I started turning the crank, a man came in and I immediately stopped and pretended I was doing something else.  I'm sure he realized what I was doing and I must have been all of twelve years old.  I had no reason to buy the thing other than to just see what all the fuss was about.  Across Alston Ave. from the station was Talley's market and on futher down and around the corner was Earl Warren's barber shop where I would get a GI haircut and glorious shoe shine while listening to the popping of the shine rag. This was Edgemont at it's best for a little boy who could ride his skeleton bicycle through the streets and jump the curbs, half killing myself sometimes.  We could walk or ride our bikes all around the area without fear of anyone harming us, except for the other boys who were the bullies.  I soon learned to carry a switchblade my daddy had given me, but of course mother found it and threw it away.  Good thing she did too, because I probably would have used it sooner or later.  Sweet memories of a slow and decent time that will never return.