Gas War : Mobil Wants to Cut Supply to Landmark 1927 Station in Orange but Owner Says He’s Pumped Up for a Fight

If they come Monday, Don Clark is ready for them.

No matter that they are the giants of Mobil Oil, and he is 75 and the sole owner of a small service station dating to 1927.

In the shade of his office, cluttered with papers and dusty antiques, Clark folded grease-stained arms, lifted his chin and squinted through horn-rimmed glasses pushed up from the end of his nose. “We’re going to fight this to the end.”

Six months ago, Clark said, the big guys wrote to him, saying he was not selling enough gasoline from his landmark blue-and-white station in Orange. It’s the one at 305 S. Main St., surrounded by black-and-silver office buildings. They said they would stop his gasoline supply when their contract ends and take away their rusty, old Mobil sign and credit-card equipment.

That day, Clark said, is Monday.

“It’s kind of a shock to think they can do this to me,” he said. “I don’t think they can get away with it.”

He doesn’t have a copy of the contract and said, “I don’t think they even sent us one.” He gave the letter to an attorney down the block.

In fact, he said, the business has had a steady increase and recently has sold “a lot more than anytime in the history of the station,” which he has owned since 1953.

The letter from E.W. Thompson, Mobil Oil district manager, states that Clark’s contract will not be renewed because of “economic and profitability costs and marketing expenses and supplies,” said attorney Brian Bickard of the Orange firm of Nord & De La Flor. Mobil rerepresentatives couldn’t be reached for comment. Bickard and Clark are scheduled to meet Monday to decide their strategy.

Clark, a third-generation Orange County resident, has spent his life around cars, first servicing Model A’s and Model Ts when he was 12, later owning his own automotive electrical firm. His station was built by two Danes in 1927, said Clark’s son, Dean.

Near a shiny electronic pump, an early 1900s hand gas pump is on display. The office holds an old button cash register that dings, and a roll-top desk missing its top and a chunk of wood that fell out years ago when a car crashed through the office.

In the yard where Clark does repair work, a clapboard restroom indicates a side for men and another for “ladies.”

The building with a ski-slope roof isn’t officially listed as historic, but “everyone thinks of it that way,” Clark said.

Saturday, old-timer Fred Gerjats, 75, dropped by to hang out and talk over old, better times. Newcomer Karen Krebs, 30, stopped for gas, and for service she said she doesn’t find as easily elsewhere. “Young people don’t know what full service really means,” she said.

Both were sad that the station might run out of gas.

Clark’s station is “kind of neat-looking,” Krebs said. “I like the quaintness.”

Clark said it is highly questionable whether he could get gasoline from another source. He handed over an April newsletter from the California Service Station and Garage Owners Assn. charging that the major oil companies are refusing to sell gasoline to competing, independent dealers in a “further attempt to control the market place.”

Clark said he won’t close down and sell “unless I’m stepped on and squeezed out.”

But to be fair, he said, peering over his glasses, which had slipped back to the tip of his nose, “if we were in their situation, we might do the same thing.”