Last week, Cupcake, my white 1994 Honda Civic, was
having some braking issues, so my stepdad suggested that I drop her off at
Freddie’s Garage and Towing. Located along Highway 80 East, Freddie’s is a
small, privately-owned, old-fashioned car garage that doesn’t take debit or
credit cards; cash or check only.
I’d never dropped my car off at a garage before,
so I was slightly nervous as I approached the small building. The door was wide
open, revealing an old wooden desk that was cluttered with papers, trinkets,
objects that were probably car-related, but that I wasn’t familiar with. The
whirr of a giant fan was the first thing I heard, and I noticed the place
wasn’t air conditioned.
“Can I help you?”
I turned to my left to see where the sweet
Southern voice had come from, and behind another wooden desk hidden behind a
computer screet sat Miss Laura Leonard (I just call her Miss Laura), a
red-headed woman with glasses. I hesitantly walked toward her desk, and told
her of my brake issues. She stood up and walked around her desk and passed me
to get through the door to see my car.
After hearing my explanation, she made a
hypothesis diagnosis about my brake rotors, calipers, and hose being damaged,
and told me that they wouldn’t be able to look at my car until Monday, which
was fine with me. She called me the following week to tell me her hypothesis
had been correct, and I was curious as to whether she herself had been the one
to look at my car, or if she was just the messenger. I decided she’d be a great
person to interview.
During our interview, many customers came into the
building with different questions, and the phone rang a couple of times, giving
me more opportunities to see Miss Laura in her element. Having car troubles can
be frustrating, but customers can feel relieved to interact with Miss Laura’s
sweet, assuring personality. It is very clear that she is a major help in
keeping Freddie’s running.
A little about Freddie’s…
Freddie’s was opened, not by Freddie himself, but
by his father in August 1946 as a gas station. Where it currently is located is
where it has always been, although Miss Laura informed me that the current
building used to extend where the yellow line of Highway 80 is, but was cut
back in order for the road to be built.
When Freddie’s father passed away, Freddie turned
the gas station into a garage, and with the transition, he also decided to stop
taking debit and credit cards, and accept cash and checks only because of fees.
Next month, Freddie’s will be celebrating its 70th
anniversary.
About Miss Laura…
“Have
you always been interested in cars?”
“No, actually. My father was a mechanic, but I
didn’t care back then.” Miss Laura said she wasn’t fully interested until she
began dating Mr. Roger Leonard, who is now her husband. They’ve been married
for sixteen years, seven of which they lived on Tybee Island.
“He [Mr.
Roger] worked at Goodyear when we first got together,” she explains, “and I
would hang out there. And you know, it is kinda interesting. When he started
here with Freddie, I was working at the IGA in the deli. And after a while, he
decided he needed some help; it was just Roger and Freddie. So Roger was trying
to work on the cars (he did all the diagnosing, and [took] calls for parts and
calls for Freddie). So, he told me, ‘Come over here!’ And this is what I’ve
been doing ever since; I’m a service writer. So I have to look up the parts,
get the prices, call the people…give ‘em the bad news [sometimes].”
“Do
you diagnose cars yourself? You diagnosed mine a little bit…”
“The next thing he taught me (he does this all the
time) is, someone will tell him, ‘My air conditioner will only blow on number
4, but not 1, 2, or 3.’ And he’ll tell them, ‘Oh, go ask Laura!’ And [I know]
that’s the blower motor resistor.”
In regards to my car brake issue, Miss Laura said, “I had that happen to me on my Ford Ranger a long time ago. Except mine locked up solid; it just froze, smoke, everything. It was bad, Freddie had to tow me back from Wilmington Island.”
“You just get to the point where you can see them,
and your problem is just what it sounded like. But I always tell people, ‘I am
not the one that [officially diagnoses] it, it’s just what I think!’"
Miss Laura says she thinks she’s been Freddie’s
service writer for about ten years, although she explains, “It could be longer,
I don’t know! I don’t even remember anymore; it just blends together!”
When asked what her favorite place on Tybee Island
was, Miss Laura responded that she just liked walking on the beach. “When we
lived here, I usually only did it early in the morning, or later in the
afternoon because I burn so easily! But I like going extremely early in the
morning.”
Miss
Laura had the opportunity to answer previous interviewee Carola Stone’s
question: What’s your favorite book, and
why?
“Actually, it’s a three-part series, and it’s by
Nora Roberts: The Inn Boonesboro
trilogy. I love those books.”
She conveniently had the second book under her
desk, and pulled out the worn paperback for me to look at. The book’s curved
cover edges, and off-white pages told me that it had been held many times. In
fact, Miss Laura said, “I’ve read the trilogy about ten times already!”
“I like them because it’s not horror, it’s not
sappy, it’s just…nice.”
She also suggested a series I should read about a
bounty hunter called The Numbers
trilogy by Janet Evanovich.
“Right now I think it’s up to twenty-five or
twenty-six!” she exclaimed, “The main character is a bounty hunter, and she’s
kind of like me: she’s never done this job before in her life, and she takes it
with her cousin because she got laid off, and she’s terrible at it. But the more she bumbles and grumbles her way
through it, she always ends up finding the guy, and solving the mystery. The
library has the books, and it doesn’t matter where you start. Number one is
probably the slowest one, but I actually started on number ten! I found it in a
book bin for like a buck or something, and I started it, and she is hilarious!”
Finally, Miss Laura’s question for the next Tybee
Island Profile is: What do you like to
do in your off time?
No comments:
Post a Comment