By the time I was old enough to drive, American gas stations had entered the Self Service era and, at several cents cheaper per gallon, I always opted to pump the gas myself.

However, the mystique of the full service gas pumps continued to fascinate me. Most of the gas stations that had Self Service, back then, also had full service, and often the attendant would be standing by the pump, just waiting for someone to call his name. Well, it really was not his own name that he was waiting to hear, but it was the moniker that had been associated with the full service gas pump attendant -- a veritable code name, if you will -- that apparently brought him tremendous satisfaction.

How did I know this? I knew this from having observed my father.

Spending part of my early childhood in La Crescent, Minnesota -- apple orchard country nestled in as pretty a setting as you will find anywhere -- I learned a lot about life just by hanging around Dad (and Mom too, though in this particular story Mom just didn't know the inner workings of the gas stations the same way Dad did).

See, every time Dad pulled into the gas station in La Crescent, near the bridge that would take one across the Mississippi River from La Crescent to La Crosse, he would roll down his window, pull the car up to the pump (all pumps were full service back in those days), and he would nod and call out the attendant's name, Philip Regular.

Now, Mr. Regular seemed like a nice sort of fellow. As this was a small gas station in a small town, we always had the same pump attendant. I did think it a little odd that Philip Regular actually wore a gas station uniform with another person's name -- I think it was Jake or something like that -- but I figured he had been given his uniform as a hand-me-down, like the clothes that I always gave my little brother.

So, once a week or thereabouts, Dad and I would pull into the gas station, and Dad would say the man's name -- Philip Regular.

I recall one particular stop at the gas station when Dad sent me inside the gas station store to get something. I walked by Philip Regular, and since I knew it was polite to say hello to people, I nodded and said, "Philip."

Philip Regular looked at me with kind of an odd stare but didn't say anything. I wondered at that point if maybe I should be calling him Mr. Regular instead.

Anyway, it was interesting. Mr. Regular must have known Dad pretty well, because Dad never had to tell him how much gas, or what kind of gas, to put into the tank. Dad would just call out the man's name in sort of the same way that you might say, "Evening," to a stranger you meet on the sidewalk.

Of course, as a child grows and learns how things really work, I learned about the secret of Philip Regular when we drove from La Crescent down to Onawa, Iowa, to visit my grandparents.

Along the way, we stopped for gas in a small town in Iowa -- a town I had never seen before in all of my then six years on this planet -- and as we pulled in to the station, Dad lowered his window and greeted the attendant with, "Philip Regular," and a nod.

It was an epiphany for me! At that moment I knew the very truth, the secret, the deep roots of the American gas station system.

Philip Regular was a nickname, an alias, for all gas station attendants! Just as there is a Santa Claus in every town near Christmas -- though I knew that the Santa in our town was the real one, and all the other towns had a Santa in disguise -- every town has at least one Philip Regular who pumps gas at the local gas station.

Now, I wasn't so naive as to think that our town would have both the real Santa Claus and the real Philip Regular. I even came to the conclusion that the true name of our gas pump attendant really was Jake, just like the name on the uniform.

To test out this hypothesis, I only had to do one thing. The next time that Dad sent me into the gas station store to get something, when I walked past the gas pump attendant I said, "Hi Jake."

The man looked at me and said, "Hello there."

That verified it for me. The man's name was Jake; we just called him Philip because that was the thing to do. From that point on, any time I went into the gas station store, I would look at Jake, give him a wink so that he would know that I knew how it really worked, and I would say, "Hi Philip."

The years passed, and Dad entered the Self Service gas world along with everybody else. No longer did he lower the window and say hello to Philip (or Jake rather). I was saddened that this mystique of having an alias, a sort of gas pump attendant undercover name, had gone by the wayside.

And then, one day when Dad and I were driving somewhere and I was old enough to put gas in the car, Dad pulled into the gas station and turned to me and uttered the new alias, the latest gas station undercover name for the self service gas station world.

As I stood there putting gas into the car, I wondered how many other people would know my gas pump self service name.

Philip Unleaded. It had a nice ring to it.