I'm not certain exactly when just about every service station started making you pump your own gas. I guess it was back in the early '70s during the oil crunch. 

I'm a bit of a dipstick when it comes to doing anything more with a car than turning on the ignition and pressing the gas pedal. 

It's not that I'm above pumping my own gasoline, but it sort of makes me nervous. I'm never quite certain how to work the gas nozzle. 

My greatest fear is that the gas nozzle won't automatically shut off like it's supposed to when the tank is full and gasoline will spill out all over the ground and all over me and some guy will toss a cigarette away and I'm instant fried Buddhist monk. 

There's something else, too. There isn't anybody around to wash your windshield anymore, either. 

If they're going to make you pump your own gas, certainly nobody is going to be friendly enough to come out and ask, "Want me to get that windshield?" 

And, even on the rare occasions you find a full-service service station, if the attendant does attempt to clean your windshield, he will do a lousy job. He will spray a little cleaner on your windshield and then run over it once with a squeegee and leave a lot of film. Instead of getting the bug goo off, he simply will smear it. Nothing worse than smeared bug goo. 

All that is to say I stopped into the Gulf station on Peachtree at the entrance to Ansley Park the other day and I met Melvin Slaughter, an attendant there. He had a shirt that had his first name sewn above his left breast pocket. 

Melvin told me he was 28 and he was from Macon and he had been working at the station for three years. 

Melvin Slaughter, as it turns out, is a great American. 

I was in my red Blazer. I told Melvin to fill it with unleaded. He did, and then without my asking, he washed my front windshield. 

A friend had borrowed the Blazer recently to drive to St. Louis. Half the bug population between Georgia and Missouri was dead on my windshield. 

Melvin didn't wash my windshield. He attacked it. He sprayed on the cleaner and ran the squeegee through twice, and then he wiped the film off with a paper cloth. 

But there was still some serious bug remaining, so Melvin got another paper towel, and one by one, he got the bugs off. 

I mean he dug down there deep. Elbow grease, they used to call it. Melvin simply refused to leave a single spot on my windshield. 

Then, if that wasn't enough, he went to the back window and did the same sort of job. I said to Melvin, "That's the best job I've had done on a windshield since gasoline was 30 cents a gallon." 

Who was president then, Harry Truman? 

Melvin replied, "I just try to do the best job I can do. That's what they pay me for." 

Melvin Slaughter made my day. Made me think perhaps friendly service isn't dead and gone. Made me feel like a person can still take pride in his or her job, no matter if it is doing his or her best to get bug goo off a windshield. 

Isn't that what made this country great in the first place? Absolutely. That and unlocked restrooms. 

I sort of miss them, too.