The flyswatter repairman at the Texaco station

When you are a beginning writer -- one who aspires to write for magazines -- it's difficult to recognize a story even if it hits you on the head. That was me a long time ago. Now, as a writer of many years, if something hits me on the head, I write about it.

What I want to tell you is about one of the stories that I bumped into long ago that I most regret not writing. It happened in Needles, Calif., a town best known for its sizzling summers and Snoopy's brother Spike.

I was on a road trip to the Midwest from my home in northern California. My gas tank was low so I pulled into a gas station. I think it was a Texaco station. It was unbearably hot -- a day you want nothing to do with sunshine.

THIS WAS A LONG TIME AGO when an attendant would pump your gas. Sort of like present-day Oregon. While my tank was being filled, I stretched my legs. In those days, gas stations did not have mini-marts, only Coke machines that dispensed a bottle for a quarter. So, in telling you that I was an adult in an era when Coke was a quarter, you know that I am old.

Quarter in hand, I walked toward the machine, which was near the big window of the gas station's greasy and messy office. Inside, an old man sat on chair. I couldn't tell what he was doing. But then on the window I spotted a hand-made cardboard sign: "Fly Swatters Repaired."

Sure enough, the man was repairing a fly swatter. I can't remember now how he did it because I wasn't curious about unusual things back then like I am today. But I do recall thinking that you could buy a brand new fly swatter for less than a dollar. So how could a person could earn any money repairing them?

I watched the man for a minute, then went back to my car, paid my $3 and drove away heading east on Route 66.

After a few minutes I began to think about the old man. I thought about turning back to talk with him, to learn more about repairing fly swatters. But as each minute passed, so did another mile, and turning around became a bigger commitment. I kept going.

I returned to Needles a few years later on another trip. I stopped at the gas station. The man was not there, and there was no sign advertising fly swatter repair.

I asked the station attendant about the man, but he said he had never heard of him. I suspected that's what he would say. Still, I was hugely disappointed in not learning about the old man, and how and why he repaired fly swatters.