We had many interesting customers over those years. A few are worth mentioning.

One time an older man came in with a newer Cadillac that had an intermittent problem with the back lights. He was very suspicious and watched every move I made, questioning everything — why was I doing this, why was I doing that. When he came close to insulting me by questioning whether I had the knowledge to work on his problem, I told him that I was a trained electronic technician, that I had studied electrical engineering at MIT, and that I challenged him to find anyone better equipped to diagnose an electrical problem on his car. After that he became one of our best customers. He never questioned anything we did again.

He lived in a nice house in Wellesley and we plowed his driveway in the winters. He was originally a Russian immigrant and had done very well for himself — a self-made millionaire. One time he came to me and asked if I wanted to buy one of his 10-story apartment buildings in Cambridge, right on the Charles River. I told him I did not have the money. He said that did not matter — he would finance it himself, he wanted someone reliable to take over managing it, and he considered me a hard-working immigrant he could trust. I was suspicious of the whole arrangement and I was also very busy at the station, so I declined.

One day he simply stopped coming in. Another older Russian man who also frequented the station had known him, and when we asked where his friend was, he told us he had died of cancer — that he had not wanted anyone to know so that no one would feel sorry for him.

I most likely passed up the opportunity to become wealthy owning an apartment building on the Charles River. Oh well.