I am remembering and honoring my paternal grandfather ("Pops") today (May 25, 2025) on his birthday. He passed away in 1983, close to his 82nd birthday.
On his birthday in 2020, I decided to search online, using his name and where he lived, to see if there was anything about him that I could find. I am still shocked by what I found, which I purchased back in 2020.
Someone on eBay was selling a matchbook (without matches) from the 1940s from the Texaco service station that Pops owned and operated from the 1940s until the late 1970s on Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. My father had a bicycle repair business there when he was in his early teens.
Pops emigrated from Porto, Portugal, to the United States when he was a teenager. He was a construction worker who helped build many of the highways on Long Island. He was also in the Merchant Marines. I think it may have been before his construction work.
In the 1950s, Pops established a real estate and house appraisal business. I remember going on appraisals with him in the 1960s as his "helper" when my age was in single digits.
It's nice to have this Texaco memory and my many mental memories of Pops.
PHOTOS:
1. the Texaco matchbook
2. his Texaco station and his real estate office right next to it on Memorial Day in 1959, which was 66 years ago today.
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