In the 1930s and 1940s the street now called Green Street was McDonough Street. It was the highway through Conyers westward to Atlanta and eastward  to Augusta. The building on Green Street presently housing Peppers Heating and Air Conditioning Co. was a “filling station” named Huff”s Service Station.

Mr Huff, an elderly gentleman, lived in the big house next door, which was demolished a few years ago for whatever reason God only knows. Jess Wallace, a relative, mostly operated the station, pumping gasoline and all the other things they did at service stations in those days. Mr. Huff mainly operated a sitting chair, speaking to acquaintances who stopped by.

They had a few goods for sale in the store, but I recall the glass fronted candy counter mostly. There was licorice – which I hated – gum and other candy. I remember blocks of fudge with a ring stuck in them.

For a dime I thought that represented very fair value, but my father felt otherwise. He operated a feed and seed business on the railroad right-of-way right across the street, which accounts for my being in the vicinity a lot. Needless to say, my fingers went unadorned with rings and my mouth never savored the fudge.

Mr. Huff wore a straw dress hat, the classic “skimmer” straw, and he wore it every day – summer and winter. It was as though it were attached. He obviously felt very comfortable in it.

The gasoline pumps in front of the station had large glass tanks at the top in which you could see the gasoline to be delivered into your auto. There was a graduated marker which indicated the number of gallons remaining in the pump tank. The attendant used a rocker pump to refill it when needed. The gasoline did not need pumping into the auto. It flowed by gravity from the pump tank down into the auto.

One fine summer day Steamboat Wheeler, who drove the gasoline delivery truck, was just wheeling into the front area of the station to deliver a tank of gasoline when a gust of wind came along and blew Mr. Huff’s hat – his prized straw skimmer – off his head. It rolled. It rolled a good distance before rolling directly into the path of Mr. Wheeler’s gasoline truck. As fate would have it, the hat stopped squarely in front of the wheels of the gasoline truck and was consequently crushed. Mr. Huff retrieved his hat, and examined it carefully as he reshaped it to its former condition – almost. The lid of the hat, the top disc, was broken out.

Nobody knew how Mr. Huff was going to react to the loss of his favorite hat and maybe his only one. Actually, they didn’t have to wait long. The next day Mr Huff was sitting as usual in his straight chair in front of the station. He was wearing his favorite straw skimmer. During the night Mr. Huff – or someone else – sewed the lid back on the hat, making it look pretty good. Consequently, Mr. Huff, being properly re-united with his skimmer, wore it the rest of his life.