Mr. Robert Meyers, “Bob Meyers,” as he was affectionately known in Ocean Beach, opened the Stewart & Meyers Mobile Oil gas station at the corner of Newport Avenue and Cable Street in October 1941. Six weeks later — on Dec. 7, 1941 — the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we were at war. Gas was suddenly rationed. “What were we going to do?” remembered Mrs. Meyers. “We had three small children, everything invested in a gas station, and now we couldn’t sell gas.” I know how Bob got through it — service. He had a service station, not a gas station. Can you remember then? You drove in, ran over the little black hose across the drive way, the bell would “ding!” and out would come the cheerful service station attendant. He would bend down to eye level and ask, “What pleaseth thee?” The reply: “Two dollars worth of ethyl, please.” That was enough to fill the whole tank with high-test fuel when it was only 10 or 12 cents a gallon. Then the attendant would check under the hood, pull the dip stick and show it to you, top off your oil and radiator, clean your wind shield, and fill up your tires if needed. You never had to get out of your car. Stories of Mr. Meyers helping his neighbors and our community abound. One foggy morning I left my headlights on. At the end of the day, I discovered my battery was dead. I called AAA, went outside, opened the hood of my car, and waited for the big blue-and-white tow truck. But what came? A little silver-gold, two-door Corvair sedan with a little old man and his wife inside. It pulled in front of my car and backed up. Mr. Meyers got out with a pair of jumper cables, opened his trunk, (which is where the engine is kept in a Corvair,) and hooked me up. Two minutes later, I was on my way. I tried to give him my AAA card, but he refused it. He and his wife were on their way home from the station, and he didn’t feel like bothering with the paperwork to bill the Auto Club. “Ahh, you just needed a jump. Get along on home to your family too, young fellow,” he said. Service. Loving, caring service. When the Mobile Oil Company informed Mr. Meyers they were going to replace all gas pumps with the modern “do-it-yourself,” automated pumps, Mr. Meyers said, “Not at my service station will you. You can just take your gas pumps away and be gone with you!” But he wasn’t done yet. He turned it into a tire store and kept on working and serving the public because he had one original employee who had not quite reached retirement age, and he wouldn’t hear of closing shop and denying his employee honest work. As the years went by and Mr. Meyers aged, I got to be the one who served him. He came to see me for lower-back pain that radiated into his leg. “I think I don’t have enough fat on me and my oil is running too cold,” he told me. He was a loving family man. “I made a deal with my kids; I told them if they meet me at Jimmy’s Restaurant on Sunday mornings, I’d buy them breakfast,” Bob said. His son was 65 when he told me that. Mr. Meyers was also generous and thoughtful. He dropped by my office at Christmas time one year and handed me two, mint-perfect 1964 JFK silver half-dollars as a present. You know, I cherish them because Mr. Meyers gave them to me and I loved President Kennedy. Always optimistic, cheerful, and quick of wit, the last time I saw him, I said, “Hello Mr. Meyers, how are you doing?” He said, “Well, young man, at this age, not so well. But then, I don’t have any experience being this old.” – Dr. Warren Patch is a doctor of chiropractics with an office on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Bob Meyers passed away around 2003 or 2004 at the age of 94.