Placentia Service-Station Operator Is Not Afraid to Get Her Manicured Nails Dirty

Being a car mechanic and service-station operator doesn’t have a thing to do with being a liberated woman, according to Mary Lou McClelland-Littell, 35, who says “it just beats working indoors as a dental assistant.” That is the job she had for seven years before her father, C. L. McClelland, 71, hired her to manage his thriving Mac’s Service Center in Placentia.

Before dentistry school, she was manager of the Santa Ana Montgomery Ward auto service center, “but I’m not liberated in the least,” she says. “I like men to open doors for me, and you’ll never see me without a lot of makeup on or wearing jeans outside of work. I don’t have to be tough.

“I run an old-fashioned service station, because my daddy trained me that way, and I started working with him when I was 15. He wanted every customer to get a good job for their money and nothing has changed. He never cheated anyone, and neither have I.”

She knows all her regular customers by their first names, “and that’s just good old-fashioned business.”

McClelland-Littrell (“I’m also called Louie”) says that safety education and car care are a big part of her service since many people use the self-service island to save on gasoline costs.

“We tell our customers it’s OK to save money on gas, but make sure the rest of the car stays in shape,” she says, noting that her attendants check each car’s oil level even at the self-service island. “It may save someone’s engine and it’s good public relations.”

She doesn’t do much work in the back shop these days, leaving that to two full-time mechanics, one of whom is her husband, Mike Littell.

“But I’m back there when I’m needed and can still do most of the work. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. This is a grubby, hard job,” she says.

She notes, however, that “my manicurist works on my nails and and I work on her car.”

Ginni Withers of Fountain Valley hopes to do better in next year’s 10-day Great American cross-country race. She’s going to drive a 1907 Thomas Flyer, the same car that took 168 days to win the original New York-to-Paris Great Race in 1908.

Although Withers won $25,000 when her 1906 Mitchell was the oldest of 85 cars to cross the finish line in New York, she actually ended up dead last in the timed race. The winner got $100,000.

“It’s going to be different next year,” she says, pointing out that she’s going to drive a car one year newer that has lots more horsepower.

Her husband, Newt Withers, will be one of her competitors.

Talk about working yourself up from the bottom and you’re talking about Samuel Garcia, 26, of Stanton. He spent 5 1/2 years as a shuttle driver, bellman and banquet floor set-up and cleanup worker at the Anaheim Marriott.

The hotel just named him senior convention floor manager.

Acknowledgments--David L. Walkington, 55, a Cal State Fullerton biology professor whose research interest is in cacti, was selected director of the Fullerton Arboretum. . . . Businessman William M. (Bit) Lansdale of Huntington Beach was named to the California Horse Racing Board.