Old gas stations

[Fading Fast]

⇧ The rules and regulations around advertising financial products today are much, much more restrictive than those for most other products because, in part, it is general believed that lying to people about their money / their investments is worse than lying to them about their dish soap.

I'd argue that we should consider making other products live up to similar standards. My only hesitation is the result could be that all products would then be advertised in the same anodyne, boring, generic, information-less manner that financial products are.

How many commercials showing financially comfortable looking, but not excessively so, physically good looking, but not excessively so couples in their 50s to 70s doing reasonably youthful activities, but not excessively so, with a soothing narrator coming over the top saying innocuous things about "stewardship" or "preparation" or "planing" can one take? To be sure, there are some other "templates" financial companies use in advertising - but you get the idea. If all industries adopted a similar model, our public might be safer or just commit mass suicide from boredom.

The positive is we'd have less hype, less lying, less obnoxious deception - all good things - but man would advertising become homogeneously mind-numbing.

 

[ChrisB]

Guy's Filling Station, Washington NJ:

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[Ghostsoldier]

A few more...

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

Note the tires spiral-wrapped in paper tape. You don't see that anymore.

 

[Fading Fast]

Note the tires spiral-wrapped in paper tape. You don't see that anymore.

At some point, my memory just isn't clear, but I think I remember going into local garages - one and two man repair shops - with my Dad in the late '60s / '70s and seeing dusty versions of those on the top / back of shelves. But in truth, I am not sure that I'm not confusing those old garages - which I definitely was in and definitely saw dusty back of the shelf parts from God know when that were all but antiques - with pictures of the wrapped tires. Even as a kid, I loved all that "old" stuff. I remember seeing really old fan belts somewhere that were squeezed at the center into a cardboard "package" that had, my best guess, '40s advertising on them. I was fascinated with that stuff as a kid. I always wondered (understand it better now) why the style of advertising changed so much.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Funny thing is, just about everything in those old auto parts photos are still available today---albeit from specialty restoration dealers, and at substantially higher prices, lol.

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

At some point, my memory just isn't clear, but I think I remember going into local garages - one and two man repair shops - with my Dad in the late '60s / '70s and seeing dusty versions of those on the top / back of shelves. But in truth, I am not sure that I'm not confusing those old garages - which I definitely was in and definitely saw dusty back of the shelf parts from God know when that were all but antiques - with pictures of the wrapped tires. Even as a kid, I loved all that "old" stuff. I remember seeing really old fan belts somewhere that were squeezed at the center into a cardboard "package" that had, my best guess, '40s advertising on them. I was fascinated with that stuff as a kid. I always wondered (understand it better now) why the style of advertising changed so much.

Our place was a time capsule of this kind of stuff. My grandfather was a worse pack rat than I am, and once an item was in stock, it stayed there until it was sold, no matter how long that took. In the '70s we still had a few 6.00 x 16 tires, popular in the 1940s, stored in the rafters, wrapped in that paper tape, and we could furnish belts and hoses for just about anything back to a Model A, all hanging from racks in the grease room. We had a set of shelves in the office that had stacks of "speciality products" dating back at least to the 1950s, stuff like SolderSeal radiator powder, Wynn's X-Tend, Texaco Home Lubricant and Upper Cylinder Oil, all that kind of stuff that, every once in a great while, would get sold and you'd have to brush off the dust to see what the price was.

It is one of my great regrets that when we sold the building, all this stuff just went to the dump. But people didn't think of things like that at the time.

My favorite bit of packrattiana at our station was a board nailed to the wall at the back of the grease room, over the shelf for the lubrication manuals. It had dozens of oil-change reminder stickers stuck to it, from customers of rival gas stations and garages who had switched to our place. This "trophy wall" dated back to the 1940s, and was a treasure trove of old oil-company logos and trademarks. I don't remember what became of this board -- I can't imagine that I didn't take it off the wall to keep when we vacated but there are big holes in my memory of that time, and I don't know where it ended up. It's one of the things from the station that I really really wish I still had.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

That's an awesome memory, Lizzie...I started working auto parts retail in the late 70s, and can remember all those similar items being in the back storeroom of the store I worked in...it was an independent jobber, way before the big box stores came along, and that stuff had accumulated since the 50s.

I managed to get some of that old stuff for my collection---including the 1958 Coca Cola upright soda machine we had, which sold 6 and 10 oz. glass bottles---when the store closed down, and I got out of retail parts.

Rob

 

[BlueTrain]

I had a 1965 short wheelbase Land-Rover that came with 6.00 x 16 tires and I'll bet that was a still a common size on Jeeps and pickup trucks. When they were replaced, I got 6.50 x 16 tire since they would fit the same rims. The store in the photo that has the shelf full of tires all wrapped up in paper also had a nice fancy ceiling, too.

An uncle of mine who always had a pickup truck claimed that it was easier to get parts for an older model truck than it was a newer model truck.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I run 6.50 x 16s on my Plodge -- you can still get them, but you have to order them and pay thru the nose when they arrive.

We used to have little wire-and-tinplate stands to display tires on -- we'd set them up on the curb in front of the building. That's something you don't often see anymore either.

 

[Stearmen]

I couldn't find an exact photo, but this will give you the general idea. When you would go to your local service station for a fan belt, you would tell the attendant what size you needed and he would go into the service bay with a long pole with a hook on it, and retrieve the fan belt from the top of the wall. I sure miss those days, you were in and on your way in no time flat!

 

[LizzieMaine]

That pole is one of the things I did salvage from our station. I keep it at the base of my stairway so that if I ever fall down the stairs and break a leg or a hip, I can use it to reach over and pull the telephone off its little table and drag it over and dial 911.

The Gates Rubber people, makers of fan belts and hoses, used to run a program called the "Gates Mystery Driver." This would be a car with a deliberately faulty belt or hose that would drive into stations at random and not say anything about the flaw. If the attendant caught the problem while doing a routine oil check, he'd win a prize. My grandfather was a Gates Mystery Driver winner around 1972, and along with getting his name printed in Super Service Station, he got a pressed-fibre plaque with two Eisenhower dollars and two Kennedy halves mounted in it, at the spots where the pulleys appeared in an embossed image of a V-8 engine. It's another of the things that I managed to preserve, but I have no idea where I've stored it.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Mid-30s Ridgefield in Phoenix, AZ...

Rob

 

[BobHufford]

This one is across the street from the DX I listed earlier (that is now a pasta shop).

 

[Big Joe M]

They only take cash, but they will pump your gas when you stop at this still operating vintage station in Gettysburg, PA

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Washington, D.C., circa 1920. Mid-Washington Service Co., 14th Street N.W.

Rob

 

[BobHufford]

Young, Moon. "Pete's" Service Station, photograph, 1957;(texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117479/m1/1/?q=hat: accessed March 19, 2017),University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Cleveland Historic Society.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It takes a lot of finesse to wear a light-colored uniform around a gas station.

 

[Big Joe M]

I like his hat. Is there a way to describe his hat? What style? Are these on sale anywhere?