Old gas stations

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Petrox" was basically just detergent, which was all the rage in high-test grade gasoline in the late fifties. Mobilgas Special, Atlantic Imperial, Esso Extra, Super Shell -- they all had similar additives under various trademarked names. By any name, the stuff would dissolve the crud out of your carburetor and, the ads promised, keep it clean -- but it also knocked the octane down quite a bit and they had to put more lead in the gas to compensate. One reason why so much of that lead ended up in the dirt at the side of the road for kids to absorb into their brains as they played.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ That pic could have been shot in the town I grew up in: those stye of houses with a gas station or other retail store right next to them (zoning was, um, different back then, I guess) were quite common in one part of the town.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. One of my childhood homes had a beautiful view of the back wall of an Esso station. Happy motoring!

 

[Fading Fast]

Yep. One of my childhood homes had a beautiful view of the back wall of an Esso station. Happy motoring!

Almost like the competition was taunting you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have a very vivid memory of my cousin and I running down to the edge of the yard and spitting over the fence. Take that!

Years later that station was demolished by the local Marine Museum in an exhibition of petty small-town class politics -- they thought the station disfigured the neighborhood, and paid off the oil company jobber to evict the dealer and sell them the land. It was a vicious, hateful thing to do -- the guy had been running the place for twenty years at that point and it was all he had, and the move generated a great deal of ill will in town for the museum. (They did the same thing to the house where we had lived. I hadn't lived there for thirty years by that point, but it still stung.)

 

[tonyb]

I had almost forgotten that among the Old Man’s many failed enterprises was a gas station. He had it for maybe a matter of months around 1963. It was out in East Lawrence, Kansas, by the Kansas Turnpike. The brand was called “Freeway,” and because the Old Man was always one to put his own name on anything he could, it was, for that brief period, “Wally’s Freeway.”

I’d ask my mom what went down with that little foray into another business Wally knew nothing about and never bothered learning, but she would do what she did pretty much the whole time they were married — make excuses and/or omit the most pertinent details.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

Those are the two grimmest looking clowns I've ever seen in my life. HERE'S YOUR FREE GIFT KID NOW KEEP MOVIN'

 

[David Conwill]

....
Rob

Love that C/Gas '55!

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Another of my favorite station designs.

Rob

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Here's at least one happy gas clown.

Rob

 

[BobHufford]

Here's at least one happy gas clown.

Route 66 collectors would probably go nuts over those costumes.

 

[BobHufford]

I bet the gas station attendants loved the new models with the hidden gas caps. My '57 Cadillac was behind the tail-light. You pushed in on the reflector to release the latch.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

Toadstool Super Service. The attendants should wear little pointy caps and shoes with toes that curl up.

 

[Fading Fast]

Toadstool Super Service. The attendants should wear little pointy caps and shoes with toes that curl up.

⇧ Good one. My first thought when seeing it was who came up for the idea for that building and who paid for it as every extra flourish costs money in material and craftsmanship. I'll bet that little building was quite expensive.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob