The most difficult aspect of Russellville author Algie Ray Smith’s latest book, The Last Service Station, would be for a librarian to attempt to classify it. Is it a book of local history? Is it fiction? Non-fiction? An autobiography? A book of philosophy? Political commentary? Religious commentary? Sociology?
The answers would be yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. And add a yes to that.
The book is a little bit of everything, all things to all people.
The educator/businessman/service technician/author has published his annual fall contribution to literature and Russellville history. He delights his literary followers with a new book each fall in time for Logan County Tobacco & Heritage Festival attendees to pick up while they’re here and later for Christmas gifts. He’s published a new one each year for over a decade.
The Last Service Station is a sequel to the most fictional of his books, Four-Hole Buick, the first in many years which didn’t feature young ‘Joey’ as the central figure. Joey was clearly Ray Smith’s alter ego. He had grown up in a service station, just like the Smith & Sons gas station where the author and his siblings were reared. The focal point of Four-Hole Buick was Sammy Moore. Sammy’s back, owning and operating The Last Service Station, which—like Smith & Sons—is no longer selling gasoline. He’s grown up now, nearing retirement age. But he’s still at a service station that has been in his family for decades. His dad, “S.O.,” is now long deceased, just as Algie Ray’s father, A.C. Smith, has been.
“I can’t be Sammy,” Ray Smith says with a sly grin. “I’ve never killed anyone.” Sammy has. He takes the life of rapist/murderer Bull Dog in the earlier book, shooting the Personification of Evil with a bow and arrow and disposing of his corpse in a cistern. Bull is still dead in this book, his skeleton now beneath a new bypass, obviously the one running between the Bowling Green and Franklin roads behind the Smith property.
Sammy still worries about having killed Bull Dog, even though he knows it was justified. His conscience bothers him, and there’s always the nagging fear that his act with be outed. Yet late in this book, he confesses what he did decades earlier, although not to authorities.
As always, a Smith literary work includes the names of many former and present Logan Countians, many of whom are no longer living. Among those rating a mention this time are:
Ann Conn Johnson (Arnold), Paul Atchison Jr., Dicky Bagby, Coach Stumpy Baker, Henry Barber, Ervin Belcher, Wendell Belcher, Ashley Bland, Dick Boster, Hilton Boyles, George Dick Browder, Berks Brown, Carroll Browning, Melvin ‘Skinny’ Browning, James Bullard, Rev. Geofrey Butcher, Betsy Byrne, Hattie Jean Hunter (Carter), Ruth Price Carpenter, Hazel Carver, Paul Chandler, Benny Cox, Glenn Christmas, Jimmy Daniel, George Davis, Pernell Dennison, Marietta Doss, Denny Doyle, Larry Duffey, Carol Ryan (Duncan), David Duncan, Ike Duncan, Speck Duncan, L.W. Dyche, Dumas Edwards, Bertram Gass, Lucy Glenn, Briggs Goddard, Jana Goddard, Russell Goddard, Bobby Goodwin, Floyd Grayson, Kenny Green, Sonny Green, Johnny Guion, Dan Hall, Joy Smith Harbison, Margaret Hardin;
Dale Harris, Geneva Helm, Mrs. Grover Herndon, Ed Higgins, Ed Hill, George Hill, Huey Hinton, Marilyn Andrews (Hinton), Betty Hopson, Jere Hopson, Coach Harold Hunter, Larry Johnson, Ward Jones, Ed Katterjohn, Lura Keith, Harold ‘Plute’ Klein, Gary Koch, Charlie Lewis, Buddy Linton, Ann Lockhart, Jim Lockhart, Buss Luce, Larry Ludwig, Hilda Lynch, Bill Major, Paul McDougal, Bob Miles, Ann Goddard (Miller), John Miller, Wayne Miller, Ruth Mobley, Don ‘Cookie’ Monroe, Lawrence Monroe, Dillard Morgan, Goldie Morgan, Coach Waymond Morris, Dick Moseley, Ronnie Murphy, Coach John Myers, Tom Noe, Charles ‘Bunk’ O’Brien, Pat O’Brien, Lee Owen, Eva Smith Page, Glenn Pate, Elaine Perry, Ken Peters, Eleanor Piper, Vickie Poindexter, Roy Reynolds, Evelyn Richardson, Vivian Riley, June Lyne (Robinson), Brandon Marcellus Rowe, Kyle Rushing, Jack Russell, Jim Sanford, Dutch Shrum, A.C. Smith, Ken Smith, Lon Sosh, Curtis Stuart, Shorty Taylor, Ruel Thompson, Garry Todd, Jim Turner, Cliff Tyree, Darwin Washington, Coach B.H. Weaver, Harry Whipple, Fred Whipple, Prentice White, Young ‘Teeter’ Woodward, Howard Wren, May Yates, Toby Yates
Smith also refers to a number of places and businesses that are no longer in existence. Among them:
Bethel College, Bentley’s 10 Cents Store, Bowling alley, Boyle’s Shell, Browning’s Grocery, Cuzzin Jacks, Eagle Drug Store, Dale Harris’ Grocery, Dixie Theater, Duncan DX, Duncan’s Drug Store, Dyche’s Grocery, Floyd’s Place, Fourth Street Drive-In, Gilliam’s Grocery, Guion’s Market, Higgins’ Market, Hill’s Western Auto, Howard Pharmacy, Jack Russell’s Grocery, McCormick’s Ashland, Parkview Gulf, Perry’s Café, Red Ace, Smith and Gass Grocery, Tastee Treet, Teen Town
Yet The Last Service Station goes on countless tangents that have little do with Russellville, Logan County, justified murders or service stations. Among subjects Algie Ray Smith tackles are career welfare recipients, churches that emphasize a cappella music, cigarette smoking, Viet Nam and wasteful wars, old time major league baseball players including Denny Doyle and Satchel Paige, comic strips, types of candy, Alzheimer’s disease, Andy Griffith and George ‘Goober’ Lindsey, government business bailouts, and a wide assortment of authors, many of them unknown to the average reader.
After all of Sammy’s struggles mentally, physically and financially are wrapped up in the final couple of chapters, Smith leaves the reader with good news. He already has next year’s book in the works. It, too, is something of a sequel. Mammy and Me is a follow-up to last year’s book, Mammy and the Wild Apes, which was about his family’s history, centered around his grandmother, Cora Jane Woodward Whiting.
The Last Service Station, which is again illustrated by Russellville artist Sonny Green, is available at Smith & Son Service at the intersection of East Ninth Street, the Franklin Road and the Bowling Green Road or at Riley-White Drugs & Healthcare in downtown Russellville.