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Venango Auto Service: The Last Tire Change 1947-2014


Having a screw in my tire never felt so good and so bad at the same time. That is because for the last time in my life, I pulled up to the curb at Thompson and Venango for Bobby Wilkowski to fix my tire.

Cigar in mouth, workboots, blue Carhart pants and button shirt, well worn oil stained workgloves hanging out of his pocket, Wilkowski got down on his knees and took a look at my back passenger-side tire.

“Yep. Pat, you got a screw in there.”

My parents bought a house on 3600 Thompson Street in 1983 and it was the best thing they ever did. We live five houses from Ziggy’s. Officially called Venango Auto Service, everyone just called it Ziggy’s after the owner, Ziggy Wilkowski. After his retirement and then his death, his son, Bobby, took over but people still called it Ziggy’s.

Ziggy opened the curbside gas station and tire fix in 1947 with the old fashioned gas tank with the glass ball on top so you could see the gas swishing through the globe as you pumped it. Decades later he upgraded to stand alone gas poles that he painted red and blue. Once the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article about Ziggy’s being one of the last curbside service stations not only in the City of Philadelphia, but the country. Ziggy was quoted as saying, “Gas is $1.47 a gallon, I don’t know why my customers pay ten cents more to come to me, but they do.”

Because maybe that ten cents gave them peace of mind. Maybe that extra dime gave them a reason to get out of the car while Ziggy filled them up and they looked in the window, through the Pabst Blue Ribbon OPEN sign and admired the wooden Nativity scenes that Ziggy hand carved and had on display along with patriotic wood works of flags and military insignia. For ten cents more they got to stand on the corner of Thompson and Venango Streets and watch the world go by one car beep at a time as they got gas and found out all the news in Port Richmond.

In the mid-late 1980’s, Ziggy’s stopped pumping gas due to the new laws requiring underground tanks. With so many new EPA regulations it was impossible for a small corner curbside shop to comply. Eileen and Stas Konopka who lived three houses away from Ziggy’s were the last customers to get gas as they topped off their Volvo.

Once we moved into our new house on Thompson Street, I was awakened almost every morning at 7 AM by the firing of the air powered impact wrench loosening then tightening the lugnuts on the tires. Four beats. Four beats of that gun woke me up and in time, it lulled me back to sleep. The gun was silent on Sundays and Wednesdays, the latter being Ziggy’s day to golf.

Ziggy drove a candy apple red Cadillac Brougham. He and his wife, Natalie, lived above the gas station as newlyweds and once their kids were born and growing, they moved out to where the Franklin Mills Mall now stands. This was well before I-95 was finished, so it was a drive on country roads to get back and forth from the shop in Port Richmond to home and back again.

In the early 1970’s, a home builder bought a property plot at Pickwick and Livingston Streets with a project to build new homes with garages and dens– something Port Richmond had never seen. Ziggy’s friend and business neighbor, Ray Stankiewicz, the accountant across the street, told Ziggy to buy the last house that was still for sale on the corner. Stankiewicz and Wilkowski soon became next door neighbors for over 30 years.

Growing up with Ziggy’s on my corner, we never had to go far to get our pool floats inflated. Sometimes, on summer mornings, the line of kids to get inner tubes and rafts blown up by Ziggy’s air hose was longer than the line for flat tires needing patches.  He filled up our bike tires with air and raised our handle bars and seats every spring as we grew taller.

I can not tell you how many times Bobby jumped my car battery on an icy winter morning. Or pulled a nail from my tire and patch it up after dunking it in the water basin well like a giant donut in a tub of coffee as he waited for the bubbles to come to the surface. We wouldn’t think of going anywhere else for tires except to the corner of Thompson and Venango.

“What a class act, legends,” said George Mazzacano, owner of G&J Auto in Port Richmond on the closing of Venango Auto Service.

Kristen Smith Kuzowsky, who grew up and still lives on Thompson Street now raising her own kids on the block said, “The street will never be the same, he filled up our pool floats and pulled nails from our tires always with a smile on his face.”

Kuzowski said her twins learned the words “open” and “closed” from walking by and seeing the sign in the window. They would yell, “Bobby’s open! Bobby’s closed!”

“It’s sad that all the family owned businesses are closing in Port Richmond,” said Lisa Rispo-Mosiniak.  “After 88 years, Jimmie’s Auto Parts closed too.”

And so on Tuesday, September 30, 2014, the corner of Thompson and Venango Streets goes silent– and it’s not because it’s a Wednesday Golf Day. No more flat fixes. No more tire changes. No more impact wrench firing off those lug nuts at 7 a.m.

It won’t hit us until we wake up one morning with a screw in our tire and remember that Bobby Wilkowski and Ziggy’s isn’t on the corner of Thompson and Venango anymore.

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