Getting back to my life story on Canvey Island I also got the interest of keeping tropical fish and had quite a few tanks set up in the front room, I also had an oil fire installed which kept the house very warm in the winter.
By now I had sold the Ford to pay expenses and we walked everywhere. I was lucky as it wasn't too far to walk to the Regent Oil Company's depot I took a short cut through the council estate and was there in about thirty minutes.
Doreen had packed up work as our first child was due so now Doreen at the age of 18 was about to become a mother.
My job when it was due was to cycle down to the mid-wife's house and let her know when the labour pains were a certain time apart, So when the time came I was on my bike and away to nurse Morgan's house, praying that she was not out on another call as this would have meant cycling around to the relief nurse and panic stations, this was an the morning of 1st May 1961 and she was in (thank god) so she told me to go back and put the kettle on to boil.
When I got back the waters had broken and Doreen was sitting on the toilet so our first born nearly ended up down the pan.
The mid wife arrived and very quickly our first son was born, he was over nine pounds. I was the chief cook and bottle washer, constantly bringing hot water into the front room and cleaning up after the mid wife. The midwife's name was Nurse Morgan and she knew how to calm worried parents and as it was our first we were both worried
It was still early morning when it was all over as I remember Doreen laying in bed watching the May day parade on the television.
We called our son Michael Leonard the middle name after my father, So then began the start of my life as a dad (hopefully a good one)
Now as this is a warts and all story of my life a will give you a brief description on some of the fiddles that we got up to in the petrol industry
As this was the late 50s modern technology hadn't arrived and all the trucks were loaded through the top (without meters, only dipsticks) by loaders so we would get the loader to put
a bit more petrol into the truck than was booked out, this extra you sold to friendly garage owners at half price and when you returned to the depot you gave the loader a drink (not beer).
The only thing you had to watch out for was the visits of the customs officer who would unexpectedly arrive in the depot and check a few trucks, but we got to know his routine and were never caught.
Because of safety laws the garage owners were not allowed to climb up on the truck so to check their load you dipped the tank and passed the dipstick down to the owner for him to check, so what we did at the delivery before his you would sell some of his petrol to a friendly garage owner and so as it would not show short you would wipe the dipstick at the full mark with a wet diesel rag so it appeared to show full
(A friendly owner was one who bought wonky petrol)
After you had split a compartment of petrol (some garages did not have the storage to take a full load)you would dip what was left to show the customer and you used to lower the cross bar of the dipstick onto the toe of your boot so that the tank showed 400 gallons instead of 430 gallons that was left in the compartment (30 for yourself) which you sold to the next friendly owner.
We also had a deal going with the foreman at the depot when we bought returns back (Some genuine and some fictitious).
But one of the smartest fiddle was using science to make a quid, I shall elucidate on what I mean. These days most underground storage tanks are very large up to 80,000 litres but in those days a lot of the smaller garages only had small tanks of 500 gallons (2,200 litres), the fill hole was a 3 inch pipe and the dip hole was only an inch tube which went almost to the bottom of the tank, now the specific gravity of standard petrol is less than super petrol, so, after you had filled the customers super tank through the fill hole you the very slowly dribbled a very small amount of standard petrol down the dip tube, this remained on top of the super petrol so when the owner slowly dipped his tank (they always dipped very slow so as not to make waves and give an incorrect reading) the reading he got was a lot higher than what he had in his tank so you charged him for it. Now the unfortunate thing for him was that during the course of selling petrol the two gravity's mixed and his dip went down (by this time we were up ,up and away to a friendly garage) so science had won again (and we never used to blush).
There were dozens of ways to trick the unsuspecting owners and we became quite proficient at all of them.
