Mini Skirt Drive



I was still a student at Fairbury High School when Mini Skirt Drive opened for business. It must have been a sign of the times. The premise was simple. Mini Skirt Drive was a gas station, staffed by young women wearing mini skirts, who pumped the gas, washed windshields, and took the money. It was a popular business--for a short time.


Gas was cheap back then, maybe as much as 35 cents a gallon for regular (leaded) gas. And all gas stations were full service; self service was nearly unknown at that time. Until then, most gas stations were staffed exclusively by men, so it was quite a novelty for any gas station to have female employees, let alone women wearing ultra short skirts.


No one in Fairbury really stopped to think that Mini Skirt Drive might be a sexist name for a gas station, or that the young women who worked there were being sexually exploited in order to bring in some additional business. The gas station was considered to be a novelty, for sure. I'm certain that some customers stopped there for a fill-up just because of the unique, flashing neon sign, featuring a mini skirt clad young woman, that beckoned them in to buy gas.


I never bought gas there. In fact, I never bought gas at all, when I was in high school. Mom and Dad took care of that chore, since the vehicles I drove were family vehicles, and the only job I had was working in the family business for little or no pay. (Actually, I've never owned a car of my own. Since I was married at nineteen, I went from driving a family car to sharing a car with Bill. Now, we drive separate vehicles, for the most part, but both of our names have been on every title. And now, I pump my own gas!)


By the time I graduated from college, Mini Skirt Drive had closed, probably because the times were changing, at least where gas was concerned. We were told that there was a major gas shortage, due to an oil crisis in the Middle East. Gas prices rose drastically, clear up to 75 cents a gallon. Lines were long at the stations with the lowest prices. Some stations ran out of gas. And full service gas stations became a thing of the past, since gas stations could save money by offering only self-service pumps.





So we all, men and women alike, learned to pump our own gas and wash our own windshields. Bill taught me how, and it was a big deal. I guess it was one more step in the Women's Liberation movement.


Or was it?  Because scores of women, some clad in those iconic short skirts, were pumping their own gas and stretching on tiptoe to wash their own windshields. For a while, it seemed as if every gas station was a Mini Skirt Drive. Perhaps the sight of women in mini skirts was enough to make up for the higher gas prices and the affront some men must have felt when women invaded the formerly male territory at the gas pumps...

But no, probably not.



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