In Wyoming: Greasy Work at the Crossroads

By Joe Boyce

The scar on Steven Shepherd's 26-year-old belly looks like a zipper. His faded brown shirt is open, and the scar is the first thing you notice. "It's a splenectomy," he informs. "Hodgkin's disease. I spent a year in the hospital with chemotherapy and cobalt treatments. Now they say it's regressed." It is the beginning of another day in Evanston, Wyo. (pop. 4,848; elevation 6,748 ft.), and while Shepherd talks, the oil and water stains on the cement driveway of the A & A Texaco station are turned to rainbows by the morning sun.

For three days, Shepherd has been haunting the A & A, awaiting the arrival, by Greyhound bus from Salt Lake City, of a part for his brown Triumph sports car. The Triumph suffered a blown head gasket after pulling a U-Haul trailer up one mountain grade too many. Shepherd wears his hair long, sports a scraggly beard, an earring in his left ear lobe and a gold marijuana leaf in his collar. He is going to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he will study molecular biology. He is impatient to leave Evanston, this cowboy and oil town where they sell bumper stickers that read I'M A ROPER, NOT A DOPER.

Such sentiments are typical enough in this part of western Wyoming, which still enjoys a lingering sense of pioneer independence and unabashed patriotism. Legends like KEEP AMERICA GREEN and JOIN THE ARMY adorn the bumpers of many a local pickup that rolls into the A & A. Shepherd is not as out of place in this environment as he thinks, though. The A & A looks pretty much the way most gas stations everywhere did before self-service and digital pump readouts set in. But it is only a lasso's throw away from Interstate 80, America's main street from New York to San Francisco, and thus a haven for a dawn-to-dark stream of crippled motor homes, family sedans and four-wheel-drive pickups.

Shepherd is only one of several bit players in the cinema verite unfolding at this particular American crossroads. The set: a cement driveway, four pumps (ethyl, regular and lead-free), two tiled bathrooms, two mechanics' bays and a battery of U-Haul trailers for rent. Most of the cast had never heard of Evanston, much less the A & A, until they found themselves waylaid outside town by a steaming radiator, broken drive shaft, clogged fuel pump or flat tire, and brought here. Usually they are towed in by Jon Lunsford, 40, soft-spoken Mormon and "the Boss," or by his ace mechanic, Cliff Cole, 36, a chain-smoking drinker-turned-teetotaler, who likes to explain that he's "been working on cars for 40 years." The A & A is mainly a family business. On this, as on most days, Jon Lunsford's two oldest sons--Doug, 20, already married and the father of two, and Danny, a shy 16-year-old--open at 6:30 a.m. to answer the chorus of ding-dings set off as cars begin rolling over the rubber signal hose stretched across the driveway.

"Every day is different," says Danny. And as if to underline his observation, a blue and white car with New Mexico plates pulls up on the rest-room side of the station and a young man steps out. While Danny pumps gas and checks dipsticks, the driver quietly approaches two oil riggers on their way to Idaho who have come to rent a trailer hitch. He offers them a gold watch and turquoise ring for $150. After 15 minutes of dickering, the deal is closed. The watch and two rings go for $25. "I'm just trying to make a living. Don't ask me no questions," the young man says as he drives off.

As the sun gets higher and traffic on the interstate quickens, business at the A & A picks up, some of it local. B.L. Riddle ("Most folks call me Chief) drives in from his Running Bear Ranch to ask Danny to go elk hunting and talk about a timber wolf he's seen the day before. A middle-aged couple pull up to tell Cliff Cole of a breakdown east of town. Within minutes Cole is chugging down I-80 in the older of the A & A's two tow trucks, a 1970 Ford with some 135,000 miles on the odometer.

Ten miles out of town, Cole finds Frank Stan way, 34, whose 1968 Dodge pickup is threatening to keep him from getting to Savanna, Ill., in time for a new job. While Cole's magic fingers work on the Dodge's engine, Stanway sits in the small house trailer he plans to live in for the next two years. His sole companion, a black cat not used to strangers, hides in the toilet. Living in the trailer will save money, Stanway explains, since his new job as a civilian intern with the Army pays only about half the $18,000 a year he has been earning in a furniture factory back home in Vancouver, Wash. But the Government job offers real security and a chance for promotion.

Cole starts Stanway's pickup, advises him that a bad valve lifter is his problem and suggests that an oil additive will probably get him over the 1,200 miles to Savanna. On the way back to the A & A, Cole is reminded of Shepherd and allows as how he doesn't think much of hippies. On a recent tow job, one flagged him down on the highway. "I thought something was wrong and stopped to help. And he said, 'Hey man, you got a couple of cigarettes?' I told him to get a job and buy his own." Cole takes a deep and disapproving drag on his cigarette.

Back at the A & A, the work is piling up. Linda Buchanan, a thirtyish blonde, is waiting for someone to repair the fuel pump on her 1962 Chrysler. She is wearing a T shirt with the word BABY and an arrow pointing downward, attesting to her four-month pregnancy, and has left her husband back in Sacramento. With her sister Debra, 23, Debra's two small children, a three-legged dog and a UHaul, she was on her way to Grand Forks, N. Dak., when the engine started to overheat. They are all tired and nervous, especially the three-legged dog, which keeps barking. "She got run over by a train," Linda Buchanan explains. Within an hour, Cole has fixed the fuel pump and the party starts out for Grand Forks, where Buchanan is headed "to make a new life," she explains. "I got a job bartending."

Cole is really pleased he was able to get them on their way. In five years at the A & A, he's developed a reputation around town for his expertise with engines. A crackerjack mechanic is a rare commodity these days, and Cole has had half a dozen offers of garage jobs as far away as Los Angeles, and for more money than he will ever make at the A & A. But he grew up outside Evanston, and likes Lunsford. And though he tries to think mainly about engines and stay out of other people's lives, there are tunes when he and the rest of the A & A crew cannot avoid it. Like yesterday, when two young men drove in the station to get gas. "An old man who was partially paralyzed was in the back seat," Cole says. "He'd had a stroke and said he was trying to drive from Reno to Chicago to see his daughter before he died. He picked up these two guys on the highway to help him. I saw the trunk had been busted into and the ignition was hotwired. After they left, I called the cops."

Like service stations all over the country, the A & A has its troubles. "Five years ago, this place was a gold mine," Lunsford says. "Today I'm lucky if the gasoline just pays the overhead. I make it off the U-Haul rentals and back-room mechanical work." During the Arab oil embargo, the station pumped 500,000 gallons of gas. Last year it dropped to 400,000, he says, and his after-tax income has shrunk from $23,000 four years ago to under $10,000. "Five years ago, the lease called for $289 a month to Texaco, plus a penny on each gallon. Now it's $877 a month and nothing on the gallon." He knows he's lucky to have his sons and Cole working for him.

While Lunsford talks, Cole has gone back to working over Shepherd's Triumph. The necessary part, a head gas ket, has come from Salt Lake City, and the differences between the life-styles of the two men seem to dissolve as they work together over the Triumph engine. Cole is the professor, Shepherd an earnest but knowledgeable student.

Eventually the Triumph is ready, and Shepherd gets set to head out for Boulder. His interlude at the A & A and his first stay ever in a motel will soon be just a memory. But in this small segment of time, he has made friends, one of whom feels close enough to ask him, "What if the cancer starts up again?" Shepherd smiles. "I don't want any more treatments," he says. "But if I die I'll come back as a little black girl and I'll be a nurse."

An occasional semi-truck can still be heard vrr-o-o-oming down the interstate, but most travelers are now bedded down in campsites or in motels like the Ramada Inn across the street. Danny is off to the movies with his girlfriend, and Jon and Doug are home with their families. Cole shoves the tire and windshield-wiper racks into the mechanics' bay and lights a cigarette with hands black with grease. "Every day is different," he says, echoing Danny. -- Joe Boyce

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