Editor's note: This story by Register reporter Mike Kilen was first published in October 2017.

I pulled my car up to the gas pump in Sioux Center, Iowa, popped out to fill up, and a man with a grin was standing aside it.

I was surprised that panhandlers existed in this town of 7,500 people in northwest Iowa.

He held a pump nozzle and told me he would pump my gas. I told him I could do it, thank you.

I work here, said Oscar Morales, and we do it.

I nearly fell over. It had been since my high school years in the early 1980s the last time anyone else wielded a nozzle around my gas tank. Morales even cheerily began washing my bug-splattered windshields.

It turns out, the Co-op Gas and Oil Company in Sioux Center is a rarity in Iowa and across the nation: A full service gas station that fills your tank, washes your windows, and will check your fluids and tire pressure if you ask.

It’s the antithesis of everything impersonal and DIY in 2017, but it’s been an everyday occurrence in Sioux Center since this co-op was established in 1923.

“There are customers we have that don’t know how to pump their own gas,” said Tyler Boone, the station’s manager. “When we shut down for construction, we had a couple older ladies that didn’t know how to do it, so we sent an employee to another station to pump it for them.”

Boone said he employs three men to pump gas at all the islands, not just one pump like might be found at a rare co-op elsewhere. It adds to his cost of running the business and they typically run five cents higher a gallon than other stations.

“But we are a cooperative. We are not doing everything for the almighty dollar,” he said.

I was not the first to be surprised at a stranger with a gas nozzle. Parents bringing their children to Dordt College here from other parts of the country will quickly ask questions, Boone said. “Hey what are you doing? Don’t touch my car!“

Dawn Carlson couldn’t say for sure if the co-op is the only full-service station left in Iowa, but in her 22 years at the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa she has known of three or four others and all have gone out of business.

It was once a common experience.

“Long before you were driving, customers would pull up to the dispenser and not only receive full-service but were also offered glassware and other collectible trinkets that cemented their loyal customer following,” said Carlson, PMCI’s president.

Full-service began to wane in 1964 when the first pay-at-the-pump islands began to operate.

“Unattended fuel changed everything. States relaxed full-service mandates and convenience stores grew,” said Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores in Alexandria, Virginia.

Full-service is extremely rare in all but Oregon and New Jersey, the only states where mandates remain, because it costs stations approximately a nickel per gallon more for labor. Today, 60 percent of profits are made inside the store.

You can’t buy a pizza or your groceries at Co-op Gas and Oil, but there is free coffee while you watch someone else check your oil.

Garry Zonnefeld, 71, has been a customer since he moved to Sioux Center 26 years ago. He said the personal touch makes a difference: The fellows pumping gas not only know your car by sight, but your children’s names and your job.

“It’s the gift of gab and just friendliness that’s important,” he said.

Some customers drive a half hour just to have people like Marv Hooyer pump their gas. Often they are dressed for work and don’t like to get out; they’ll just hand him a credit card.

He’s been pumping gas here since he was 18 – for 40 years. It’s the only job he’s ever had, and he keeps working here because of that face-to-face interaction – fast dwindling in many other facets of life.

“I love seeing different people. That’s what keeps me going,” he said.

“A lot of people just like to be talked to. They like to be acknowledged.”