St. Clair native writes book about experiences at Route 66 gas station

DeWayne Landwehr, 74, a native of St. Clair, Missouri, recently published a book about his experiences as a teen employee at a 1950s service station along Route 66.

Landwehr, who now lives in Indiana, wrote: “Will That Be Regular or Ethyl?” According to a story in the Washington Missourian, he said his father owned St. Clair Hatchery, which hatched more than 20,000 chicks weekly during World War II.

But a large part of the book is about his gas-station years as a teenager. The newspaper reported:

He said that the customer base were travelers passing through and not neighborhood locals.

“I met a lot of interesting characters,” he said. “If you can imagine a young man who had never said a curse word in his life, didn’t drink, smoke, didn’t have too many bad habits, and then go to work at a place where it would be all kinds of interesting charlatans, crooks and other kinds of people coming through.”

Landwehr mentioned some of the business tactics told by his employer.

“They taught me several different ways to get more sales out of the customer. In another way, how to cheat the customer,” he said. “After that, I would never let anybody open the hood of my car. I just didn’t trust anybody getting under the hood of my car because I had seen how mechanics can really cheat the customer. Sell you things you don’t need.”

Landwehr eventually ended up working for General Motors the majority of his career, including as a technical writer.

Landwehr said he’d been working on the book sporadically for 13 years. He said locals have enjoyed the book and urged him to write a sequel. “Will That Be Regular or Ethyl?” ends when Landwehr graduated from high school, so plenty of material should be left.

The 216-page book is available on Amazon here, including in Kindle format. It also can be purchased at Neighborhood Reads in Washington, Missouri, and Dollar Plus in St. Clair.

(Image of “Will That Be Regular or Ethyl?” book cover)