Send Your Camel To Bed

Most gas stations these days have a convenience store attached to them, where you can get a dirty hot dog that has been spinning on steel rollers in a heated compartment for who knows how many days. You can pull that hot dog off the steel rollers with tongs that have not been cleaned since the day the store opened. Underneath are drawers that contain slightly stale rolls that do occasionally get changed out by the 19-year-old clerk who is usually reading a magazine on the counter during slow periods. Which occur often in the dark hours of the night.

If you buy a magazine in a gas station convenience store, you can be pretty sure it was read on the counter by one of the clerks. They are at least careful to not smear or otherwise damage the magazine so that it can be placed back in the magazine rack in somewhat pristine and salable condition.

Down South, they used to call gas stations "filling stations" and in some rural areas, they probably still do. I think "filling station" is a way more descriptive term than gas station.

Filling station conjures up images of Billy Carter types sitting out front on a bench in coveralls, sipping on some sweet tea, waiting for a customer to come along. Filling stations also brings this C.W. McCall video to mind. You can almost picture the Rand McNally maps inside that all us motorists used in the pre GPS days. The ones that folded out but could never get folded back properly again unless you had a patient wife in the passenger seat to do that for you. The kind of wife who organizes her threads and needles back at home and has replacement buttons for any item of clothing that might need one. Guaranteed an organized wife like that can be counted upon to properly fold up your maps for you and store them neatly in the glove compartment.

Glove compartment! Who actually stores gloves in the glove compartment of a car? Usually that is where the still shrink-wrapped owners manual of the car is stored along with your registration (comes in handy when you are pulled over for speeding), a half eaten package of cheese and crackers, and a bunch of loose change you will never see again. But I digress.

Now we all know that these filling stations with convenience stores have plenty of parking spaces out front and even on the sides, and sometimes even in the back. This is so that people who already got their gas can then slide into one of those spaces to go inside, allowing any drivers in back of them to roll up to the pumps to get their gas.

But as all of us know to well, this sequence of events does not always happen. What happens more often then is should is that a driver who has already gotten their gas will then commit the unpardonable sin of leaving the car right at the pump as they go inside the convenience store to get one of those dirty hot dogs. Or browse those magazines. Or even worse, go into the restroom. Meanwhile, the driver waiting to use the pump you left your car sitting in front of is sitting there, steaming mad.

Now another thing about gas pumps these days is that they still labor under the delusion that cell phones, which pretty much everybody in America now carries, are dangerous to have around gas pumps for some odd reason. Now if that were true, we would be having hundreds if not thousands of filling stations blowing up every day all across America. That's because almost everybody pumps their gas while either chatting on those phones or checking their social media or emails, etc.

Now check out the photo of the gas pump over to the left. See the big white WARNING sign to keep your cellphone turned off within 25 feet of the pump. Then look over to the right and see that their is an option to pay for your gas by using your cellphone!

It is illogical things like this that drive me crazy. You have an option to pay at the pump with your cellphone yet have a warning to keep the same cellphone turned off within 25 feet of the pump!

Now pumping your own gas in these filling stations is also a fairly new thing. If you are above the age of maybe 50 or so, you will remember the days where it was unthinkable you would pump your own gas in a filling station.

As recently as the 1970s, you would pull into a filling station and some friendly guy in a white uniform would come running out to not only pump your gas but check your oil, fill up your washing fluid, and wash your windshield as well. Even if they did get shot at from time to time.

Well that era of happy filling station clerks is long gone (except in New Jersey) and you are now expected to pump your own gas and check your own oil. Most filling stations have some kind of apparatus to clean your windshield but because the squeegees are so filthy, doing so is likely to make your windshield even dirtier than it was before.

Now when a woman is in a car with at least one man, protocol dictates that it is the man that gets out of the car to actually pump the gas. Doesn't even matter if the woman is driving the car. It is the man who must get out to pump the gas at all times. You never want to be the man to sit in a car while the woman gets out to pump the gas!

When women are driving alone however, they have no choice but to get out and pump the gas themselves but they are usually uncomfortable doing it. It just doesn't come natural to them. Women pumping gas always have that perplexed look, as if they are unsure about whether or not they are doing it right. Often they put the car on the opposite side of where the gas cap is, forcing them to get back into the car to pull around the other side of the pump. It's very awkward to watch but sometimes funny too.

However, the biggest "woman mistake" on pumping gas is leaving the fuel nozzle still in the car and driving away. This would appear to have serious consequences but fortunately most filling stations are equipped with "break away" devices at the pumps, which allows the nozzle and hose to travel with the car and the gas at the pump is automatically switched off so there is no leakage.

When the woman finally gets home and notices, the husband or boyfriend is supposed to then return the hose and nozzle back to the filling station and apologize to the owner or manager of the filling station and all is good.

Well this is my post about filling stations, inspired by the sultry song linked below by one-time belly dancer Maria Muldaur, who is still alive and kicking at the age of 80. Why does this song remind me of filling stations? Probably because filling stations can certainly be a welcome oasis when you are doing an all-night drive across the country. Those dirty hot dogs on steel rollers can really hit the spot on an all-night drive, especially when you can get two hot dogs for the bargain price of $2.22 each ($4.44 total), washed down with some black coffee that was probably brewed that morning.

Still don't know what is meant by the lyric "Send Your Camel To Bed" however. Sounds kinky.

You've officially blown my mind!
Now, please, do "Eleonor Rigby!"

Regards,

That wasn't my interpretation, that was from the link posted at the beginning of the explanation. There's more at that link on the song, so I encourage you to follow it.

Here's a different website's interpretation of Eleanor Rigby:

https://americansongwriter.com/the-meaning-behind-eleanor-rigby-by-the-beatles/

Eleanor Rigby Meaning

The first verse follows the titular Eleanor as she tidies up after a wedding send-off and peers through the window at her house.

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
In the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face
That she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for

When McCartney first introduces us to Eleanor she is living in a “dream” world of her own, picking up rice from a wedding that was thrown over the happy couple. With the opening lines, he quickly lets the listener know that the closest Eleanor comes to getting married herself is tidying up after everyone has left.

Eleanor Rigby, died in the church
And was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt
From his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

Later it’s revealed that Eleanor died, leaving no one to carry on her name. McCartney adds a bit of irony towards the end of the song by having the song’s two characters cross paths a little too late. If the two had met earlier they might have become friends with something in common, but it was too late. Eleanor died leaving Father McKenzie to “meet” her while officiating the funeral. He also implies that McKenzie’s sermon “saved” no one given that nobody attended.

Father McKenzie

The second character featured in the song’s lyrics is Father McKenzie. Without having much of a congregation, McKenzie is forced to write sermons that “no one will hear.” He later talks about darning his socks. Question is, if no one else will see if his socks are darned, why does he care? The second verse’s lines speak to the priest’s isolation and lack of companionship.

Father McKenzie, writing the words
Of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks
In the night when there’s nobody there
What does he care

McCartney spoke about this section of the song in a November 2020 piece for Rolling Stone saying, “Father McKenzie is ‘darning his socks in the night.’ You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, ‘preparing his Bible,’ which would have been more obvious. But ‘darning his socks’ kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy.”

More Popular Than Jesus

“Eleanor Rigby” was released just weeks after John Lennon made the widely controversial claim that “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”

With the addition of a priest and the many mentions that “no one was saved,” the song could be seen as a swipe at Christianity and the concept of being saved by Jesus.

Despite the controversy still brewing around the band thanks to Lennon’s comments, the song largely evaded any criticism, possibly because of the lilting string section making the song’s dark lyrics easier to handle.

Eleanor Rigby’s Gravestone

Fans can actually go to Eleanor Rigby’s gravestone in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Woolton, England—the suburb of Liverpool where McCartney and Lennon first met.

The gravestone bearing the name shows that she died in October of 1939 at 44. Elsewhere in the cemetery is a gravestone with the name McKenzie written on it. Despite the two names appearing in such close proximity, McCartney has denied that the gravestones were the source of the names. Although he has agreed that they may have registered subconsciously.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.