Life is full of characters

It couldn’t have been a tumbleweed because tumbleweeds aren’t found in Marin County. But whatever it was, it flip-flopped right down the main drag very much like one.

My car had blown a coolant hose, and I had to walk about a quarter mile before I got to the off-ramp. In my youth I knew all the backroads around here. And that was paying dividends on this day because I knew there was a little country store down that little off-ramp, which was in fact the main drag.

One expects a charming countryish general store in West Marin, which is half the charm of West Marin. But this wasn’t West Marin. In fact, it was about as east as one can get in Marin, and when I walked up to the little general store, it was just as I remembered it: two gas pumps out front, a phone booth and a screen door.

It was like stepping out of a time machine back in 1990, except the gas pumps didn’t work, and there was no phone in the booth, because while the physicality of 1990 still existed, the supporting technology didn’t.

I had called roadside service on my cellphone, and they told me it would be about an hour and a half before they could get there — ironic since a tow company sits right next to that little general store. Just not the right tow company, apparently. So, when the roadside service operator asked where I would be, I gave the name of that tow company. Spite? Irony? Probably a little bit of both. After that, I settled in for my wait and took a closer look around.

“Is that your car down the road?” asked a man sitting at the little counter that looked out over the gas pumps.

“My truck is in the shop,” he added.

And then he popped open a can of beer even before removing it from its four-pack box.

The young man behind the counter didn’t flinch. Where beer and wine licenses are concerned, there are two types: on-premises and off-premises. And they mean exactly what they seem to. With one, you can drink on the premises, with the other, you have to take the beer or wine to go. But there are a few out there that are old enough to offer both.

I ordered a sandwich because I had time to kill and because they actually looked quite good.

Two construction workers stopped by and bought a six-pack of beer. Several people came by specifically for the homemade tamales.

“You from around here?” asked the beer man, popping another beer.

“Sort of,” I said. “I live right down the highway.”

“I ride my bike out this way,” he said in response to a question I didn’t ask.

I assumed the 20-year-old 10-speed bike out front was his.

“My car is being worked on,” he said.

“I thought you said it was a truck,” I said absentmindedly, watching two women in scrubs buy a whole sheet of lottery tickets and a bottle of wine.

“Uh, both of them are in the shop,” said the man.

Throughout it all, the young man behind the counter was a blur of activity: making sandwiches, serving tamales and ringing up beer, potato chips and occasionally a canned food item from the lone shelf in the store.

“How late are you guys open?” I asked.

“We are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day,” he said.

“Really?” I asked.

“I should know,” he said. “I work here every day.”

“Seven days a week?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, because apparently he also handled the rental tool business too.

When I first started out in the restaurant business, one of the first things I learned was that the most important thing in the service business is finding the right job.

You can literally kill yourself working in the wrong place. Some employers will take advantage of all your hard work, promising rewards in the future that never materialize. Others will promise promotions or perks but never come through with them. It’s always tomorrow or next week, but never now.

I remember an assistant manager once asking me, “Who’s looking out for me?”

It wasn’t the owner of that restaurant, who just happened to be on vacation in Australia at the time.

In the restaurant business, you have to find the right place with the right management at the right time. And then hope for the best.

“Work smarter, not harder,” a grizzled old server once told a younger me. And she was right.

By the time my tow truck arrived, I had watched that young man behind that counter do more things more efficiently and cheerfully than just about anyone I have ever seen.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• “I will work harder” is what Boxer, the draft horse character in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” claims as his motto. He says it right up until the pigs sell him to the glue factory for a case of whiskey.

• It’s doubtful that the guy with the beers actually owns any motor vehicle. Call it a hunch.

• I’m older now than that grizzled old server was then.

• If you don’t know your own value, somebody else will tell you what it is, and rest assured their estimation will be far less than you’re worth.

• Wherever alcohol is served, you will also find characters. Just ask Jack London. Or Ernest Hemingway. Or even George Lucas.