At the mid-point of the 20th century and the years following, St. Mark’s parish’s 1907 church sat at the center of a village comprising a collection of small business entrepreneurs operating along Dorchester Avenue a few blocks north of Ashmont Station and a few blocks south of Fields Corner.

There were two schools, St. Mark’s behind the church and the Elbridge Smith public school two blocks away; there were two pioneer supermarkets, a First National Store and Connolly’s Market; two pharmacies, Ogar’s and Crawford’s; two funeral parlors, Mulry’s and Doherty’s; two cobblers, Steve’s and Nick’s; two variety stores, Jim’s at Lonsdale Street and Leon’s at King Street; and two insurance agencies.

And there were a dozen or so owners who welcomed customers to their specialty businesses, among them Ernie Calabro’s barber shop, O’Brien’s bakery, the Edison furniture store, Bob Goldstein’s Peabody Cleaners, Bill Curley’s and Bob Shea’s electrical contractor storefront, Benny Shwom’s five-and-dime store, a launderette, Wilda John’s salon, Mildred’s card shop, and a few who came and went, earning little notice.

And there was Bill DeKarski and his indispensable (to all ages) Gulf station at the corner of Semont Road, the only vehicle service in the village. Bill is long departed, and his lot, most recently the site of a US Petroleum station, has been showing its age for a very long time. It made the news recently when the city approved a proposal by a developer to erect a 4-story, 14-unit residential unit in that space, with room on the ground floor for a restaurant, and six onsite parking slots. The variables to a project like this – additional outside parking, condos or apartments, affordable units – await further discussion.

All that is about “now” – I’m back in a “then” zone, fetching memories of my growing-up years in that village and the personal ministrations of the gruff Mr. DeKarski working in his small office behind the gas pumps and next to the service bays.

As my friends and I moved into our mid-teens in the late 1950s and began driving lessons, Bill DeKarski moved into our lives in a significant way. In earlier times, this was the man who between working the pumps and making oil changes in the bays would come out and fix the chains on our fender-less bikes when they kept spinning off the tracks and tell us to run along. This was the guy who quickly fixed flat bicycle tires, and, in my case, told me more than once that I could pay him by being a good kid.

Soon, one by one, we gained access first to our parents’ cars and then to our own used ones, paying in the low hundreds of dollars to an uncle, a friend’s grandfather, or a local guy with five or six jalopies for sale. They were precious, but they were on their last legs, and we began hearing about alternators, carburetors, tie rods, brake linings, and engine lock as we drove into Bill’s station and waited for him to give the report. My memory is that he mostly said that he could work something out, but we had to leave the car at the station. What my memory doesn’t tell me is how he got paid. I don’t think I ever asked, but I later learned that my folks made good on the bills and that Bill didn’t make much for work he did for us.

When I mentioned this story to my brother Bob, who was always along for the ride in those early 1950s days, he recalled the times when our mother was taking her five kids to Tenean or Malibu or Savin Hill beach in our 1939 Chrysler Coupe, and she’d stop in at the Gulf station and say, “Please give me a dollar’s worth, Bill.” At 27 cents a gallon and an average of 17 miles per, we now had about 70 miles in the tank.

So, a dilapidated service station lot is getting a new life, I’m thinking about a time when at that lot in our urban village in Dorchester, Bill DeKarski played a special key role in my young life, and I feel good.