Old gas stations

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[2jakes]

Art-Deco days...

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[2jakes]

 

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[2jakes]

 

[Ghostsoldier]

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Nice station designs!

Rob

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[GHT]

The last photo, the one of the veteran car. The picture is obviously taken in North America because we never had Standard Oil as such, only S.O. branded as Esso.
Yet the car is right hand drive. It makes me wonder if there was any sort of ambiguity as to which side of the road motorists should keep to, in the early days of motoring.
Some sort of international agreement must have been arranged, I can't believe that every country on the entire continent of The Americas chose one side over the other, quite by chance.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Even more specific, in the Midwest in the mid-1930s, where the "Solite" brand, seen peeking out on the left-hand pump globe, was marketed. We had many Standard Oil Companies operating in their own specific territories after the original company was broken up by Federal decree in 1911 -- this is a Standard Oil of Indiana station, the company which eventually evolved into Amoco Corporation before being merged into BP.

Right-side-of-the-road driving was dominant in the US going back to colonial times, but there were some cars built with the steering configured as for left-side-of-the-road driving. The idea was that you would enter the car from the right hand side so as to avoid being hit by oncoming vehicles if the car was parked at the curb, and having the steering wheel on that side was more convenient. A vestige of this lingered into the 1940s -- most pre-WWII American cars could only be unlocked from the right-side front door, thus keeping the owner out of traffic.

US Mail trucks to this day are right-hand-drive so that the driver can stick mail into roadside RFD boxes without getting out of the vehicle in traffic.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

I guess that's why, in old movies, people always get in on the passenger side, and slide over the seat to the driver's side?

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. The drivers' door can't be unlocked from the outside unless you've got a coat-hanger on you,.

 

[2jakes]

 

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Shell "Share-The-Road" license tag toppers.

Shell toppers on bicycle front wheel.

Standard 26'' bicycles had no tanks. Deluxe came with simulated motorcycle gas tank.
I was lucky to find this beauty.

1934 Schwinn AeroCycle Deluxe.
Rare bike, about 50 are known to exist in original condition.

1990,@ my backyard alley.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That big electric Shell sign is on Magazine Street in Cambridge -- anyone going to Boston ought to pay it a visit. It's been there since 1933, and while the Shell station on the lot is nothing worth looking at -- 60s "ranch house" design, badly remodeled -- the sign itself is very impressive, especially after dark. You can't, as they say, miss it.

 

[2jakes]

For folks who can't visit Cambridge!

A chair to enjoy the view.

It's currently 59º & dropping, you
might want to bring a blanket and...

CHEERS!

 

[Fading Fast]

What happens when marketing has too big a budget:

"Let's see, we've done the sign, we put it on calendars, note pads and even thermos bottles - any ideas? Any? You, at the end of the table, is your hand up?"

"Um, yes, how, um, 'bout, um, we make a chair that uses the sign for the back support part?"

"That's crazy, but what the heck, we have the budget - a chair it is."

Ta-da!



"Hey, I think it turned out pretty well."

"You're an idiot."

 

[LizzieMaine]

There is very little that Shell would not cover with red and yellow paint given the opportunity, although it's just as likely that someone took one of those pressed steel lawn chairs that were popular in the forties and fifties and noticed the shell-like shape of the back and painted it themselves as a man-cave novelty. The shell-back was a common motif in such chairs for a long time.

That said, advertising chairs were, in fact, a thing -- but they were usually of the wooden camp-chair style, with a porcelain enamel insert in the back carrying the sponsor's message.

The problem with such an advertising medium is that it's only good for the job when nobody is actually using it. If the stereotype of the country-store loafer is to be believed, once you got Charlie O'Fatbutt in one of those, it'd be a long time before he got out of it.

 

[2jakes]

"Um...yes...how, um...bout those who have a ....um....need to flush it out of their system?"

"Hey, I think it came out pretty well."

"You're an idiot."