JANIE GOULD

“I’m intrepid today,” she said as she held a nozzle at Sifford’s Exxon Service Center in Vero Beach. ”I’ve read the directions, but I’m scared to death.”

But attendant Brian Peck stood nearby and quietly offered assistance while she watched the numbers rise at the pump.

“I did it!” she said when she had pumped $30 worth of gas into her car. “I had a good helper. It’s wonderful to have a place that will help us old ladies on how to do this, because we’ve let our husbands be in control all this time.  I think I’ll let Brian help me one more time when I come back. They’re nice here, very nice.”

The service station, on U.S. 1 at 15th Avenue, is owned and operated by Wiley Sifford, 76, who has worked in the business since he was a boy in New Jersey six decades ago.

Rather than Exxon, Sinclair Oil with its green dinosaur logo might make more appropriate signage for Sifford’s business. Sifford’s is one of the last full-service stations in the region, practically a Tyrannosaurus lumbering among a newly evolved herd of convenience stores with gas pumps.

“There is one full-service station in Titusville, one in Melbourne and there is, I think, one in Fort Pierce,” Sifford said. “The last one in Vero other than us was Mark’s Mobil at 43rd Avenue and Road 60.”

“The biggest change is self -service convenience stores and of course we all know about pricing,” he said. .”Our type of mom and pop service station has changed tremendously because of oil company pressure, profits, high insurance costs and high diagnostic equipment costs. “

He estimates only about 22,000 full-service stations still operate in the country and thinks most, including his, will be gone within five years.

Sifford, a native of Passaic, N.J., grew up in the business. He tells people he started fixing cars when was 3 years old and found a way to let out the air in all the cars at his father’s service station.

His father operated full-service Esso stations in Rutherford, N.J., and later, New Hampshire. Wiley started repairing cars in earnest when he was 12 and by the time he was 14 was helping his ailing father run the business.

“I really loved it and just had to decide what to do with my life,” he said.

Sifford had several options, one of which grew out of serious illnesses that struck him simultaneously when he was 8. He got mumps, scarlet fever and rheumatic fever  and was hospitalized for months. He was allowed no contact with his family during that time and lost his eyesight for several weeks. Classical music became his only companion.

“I learned to love classical music, and after I was well and got my sight back I started playing the saxophone and clarinet and taking lessons,” he said.

Eventually he became the lead classical clarinetist with a band from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester that played in New York’s Central Park.  He was invited to play with the Boston Pops in the Berkshires a couple of times. He was offered a scholarship to Eastman and did a three-month study program in music at the Juilliard School in New York.

Ne also was accepted at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., and says he was three days away from going there when he changed his mind.

“I knew that my father needed help in the business,” he said. “I had younger brothers and sisters that I needed to help raise, so I started working in the family business when I was 14.. But I continued with music.”

.He studied at Columbia University, Rutgers and earned an associates degree in business and accounting at Farleigh-Dickinson University.

Sifford stopped playing the clarinet when he was in his 20s but now he’s teaching himself to play the banjo. His many hobbies include fishing and astronomy. He plans to help his grandchildren build a telescope this summer in New Hampshire.  He’s a voracious reader, on topics as disparate as the Civil War and Golden Retriever dogs. He’s had “goldens” as pets for 50 years.

“I read five books at a time,” he said. “I still read my old college accounting books. I don’t know why, but I do.”

Until some health issues cropped up in the last year, Sifford still worked hands-on at the service station, which his son, Wiley, now manages. Full-service continues to be a priority, he said, even for customers who opt for self-service pumps. Sifford says his staff will even pop the hood and check tires for folks who don’t buy any gas.

“I have an older clientele and we help them whenever necessary,” he said. “We have handicap service. Our inside work is practically everything unless it requires special, special equipment.”

But one thing you won’t get from the friendly attendants at Sifford’s Exxon: free road maps.

“We stopped handing out maps when they started to cost us two dollars apiece and we had to buy a box of 500,”’ he said. “But I don’t think anybody can read a map any more. I know most of my grandchildren can’t read one!”