Remembering the B&L Art LaFave

A note from Art on the interview:

In our interview I left out a very important detail and
that is:  I would never have been as successful in my business
without the hard work and devotion from my wife Jean and our children
James and Rosemary.   Jean worked very hard behind the scenes and
sometimes out front as she helped me in so many ways and to mention
just  a few :  she did a lot of bookwork, running after parts, helped
me in decision making, cleaning around station, planting flowers, and
of course doing things around the house so i could be at The Station
and the children for putting up with my long hours away from the
house. I could never have accomplished any where as much as i did with
out their 365/7 help.
I would be remiss if I didn't say I need to give a lot of
credit to the people of Williamstown, Williams College and their
friends and guests for being such nice people as it made it so much
easier to serve them in my business and feel good about it and only
can hope they got as much from our association as I did as it was such
a pleasure to serve them in all their needs as it was such a nice
journey for me and my family.     Arthur

Please see below for the transcription of some interesting clips and stories.

"And that’s why we had a problem picking out a name because I didn’t want to be called the Spring Street Station, I didn’t want to be called the College Station, I didn’t want to be called the Town Station and have the name relate to the town, because sometimes there is a little division once in a while, for different reasons, between the college and the town. There isn’t now but there has been. I wanted to be able to take care of all parts of the town and have them come to my station. So it was hard to pick a name. So we picked B&L because B&L sounds better than L&B… And the most important part was we wanted to give good service. So in our name it wasn’t just B&L Gulf, it was B&L Gulf Service Station. Service was important to us."

"I would find out who was going to be in town if I could. Special people I will not mention would come into town on certain weekends of the year and their friends from New York would call me and ask me if Joe Blow was going to be here that weekend. Arthur was expected to know this stuff."
"I only hope that I’ve helped them as much as they’ve helped me."

"I remember one customer, she was the wife of a professor at the college and she came in and said to me, “If I had a dead battery when could you go and start it?” And I said, “Would right now be quick enough?” and she said “I’ve been going to this other place for 35 years and I called them up and asked them to come and start my car when I had a dead battery and he said it would be two days.” That’s one of the reasons I found it very hard to close the station because everyone knew that when they had a flat tire or a dead battery they could call Art and I couldn’t always go right away, but they knew that I would break my neck to get there as soon as I could. And that was important to them."

"Well it’s funny I went to… I was kind of embarrassed actually… did you go to any of the talks at the ’62 center where they had famous alumni come back and talk about how they became successful? Well Herb Allen was one of those and he tried to explain the good and bad points of his life, the mistakes he made, and what Williams did for him. And at one point they asked him, “who do you look up to?” And one of the five people he mentioned was me. I couldn’t believe it, me! What’d I ever do for him? I pumped gas in his car and changed his tires, ya know? I was shocked. And everyone was talking on the way out and I was really embarrassed, I wanted to sink down on the floor and get out of there."

"Carl Vogt when I closed the station was the interim president, and Carl said that people were asking what was going to happen to Arthur now and he would joke by saying he was going to put a booth down at the end of Spring Street so that I could give them directions."