Kick's customers included many important or importantly connected people. These included the CEOs of Mayflower Van and Storage and the Shane Diamond Company; a judge who rated the service of a chauffeur for his Packard; a retired police sergeant; the sister of Earl Breech, Vice President of the Ford Motor Co. (she drove the biggest Lincoln every year and I knew her son Earl Breech); an executive of Shell Oil Co., who later opened another Shell across from Broad Ripple High School for his son Bobby; and Dr. Cyrus "Cy" Clark, an eminent heart specialist.

Other customers of note were Charlie Van Meter and later, Charlie Junior. Both were burly men. The latter served with Wally Scott on the Broad Ripple High School football team. The Van Meters had a plumbing company. Also, Harvey Murnan, who drove a Greyhound bus; Paul Pickett who drove a City bus; Chet Ballard, who sported a cauliflower ear from wrestling at the Broad Ripple Park ring which sat over the swimming pool; and Eugene "Tackhammer" Smith, an expert welder who drove a 1941 Studebaker President sedan. Oddly, he poured a whole quart of motor oil into his gas tank every time he filled up. Harvey Murnan doted on Hudsons, which were winning all the stock car races at the time.

The last four years I worked for Kick, I was attending Butler on the GI bill. I had a wife and two children. When Kick retired, another friend of mine, Dick Jones, and I bought him out. The place was officially called the Richard S. Jones Shell Service, but we always called it Broad Ripple Shell. We retained all of Kick's customers and some of the hangers-on. Typical were Ed Hoy, Sr., a 30 year Navy retiree, and Bob Becker. Ed could be often seen with his hands behind his back Navy style, telling us how it used to be in the Navy. Much later I ran around with his son, Raymond Hoy, out in California. Ray, a 1936 Public School #80 graduate and Broad Ripple High School student, married Evelyn Jones, daughter of Ben Jones, the local barber. Smiling, urbane, pipe-smoking Bob Becker, an official with the Barrett Law office of Marion County, still drove his like-new 1937 Ford in 1950 and said he would buy a new Ford whenever they would build a car that he could "see out of"!

A good tune-up man, Dick was also a long-distance runner, a crack table tennis player, and a championship archer. When we ran together from his house near John Strange School, I quit at Keystone but he was still running almost to Ripple.

He resided for many years in Florida where he lost both feet to diabetes and underwent dialysis twice weekly. At 24, he married a 16 year old girl by the name of Pat, who worked at Hook's across the street at the time. He had five children with her, was divorced, and then married another Pat with whom he had five more children.

Dick and I sold out after a year, or so, and I moved to California and went to work for Los Angeles County as a social case worker - by dint of my college degree.

Dick passed away before this article was completed.