As long as I can remember, my Grandpa Lee was a Texaco man! Grandpa was a Sales Manager for the region — basically, as he explained it, he got into his puddle-jumper and made the rounds of the gas stations to make sure they were up to par and were selling as much gas and oil as possible.

When we traveled with grandpa and grandma, running low on gas meant only one thing: find a Texaco station. Going up to Northern Michigan is was a tradition to stop in West Branch – there was a Texaco station on each side of the street — stopped coming and going!

Brand loyalty was not limited to Texaco. During the Depression, Grandpa worked for H.J. Heinz. He was always grateful for the fact that he stayed employed and could support his family during this economic disaster that caused so many people to do without. This created a family mantra that if there was Heinz, that is what was purchased in the grocery store. (I still maintain this tradition).

Now, Grandma, on the other hand, appeared to not be quite so loyal to The Texas Co. Every time someone in Grandma’s family passed away and Grandma received a financial bequest, she immediately invested in stock – stock in Atlantic Richfield! Now, I once asked her why she put her money in Atlantic Richfield (which became AMACO which became British Petroleum) and she got a smile on her face and just said: why put all your eggs in one basket? After Grandpa retired in 1959, future bequests were plowed into Texaco (now Chevron).

Texaco pulled out of Michigan a number of years ago, so I could not keep up the “trust your car to the man who wears a star” tradition — I do not know if they exist anywhere due to the merger / acquisition by Chevron.

But, I have Grandpa’s pencil — the eraser is hard as a rock, but every time I run across the pencil in my desk, I remember Grandpa.