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Old gas stations

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
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LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
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This is directly across from where my street meets Route 1 -- the station building still stands, but is now a US Cellular store. The grocery store in the background burned down in the early 1990s, and is still missed -- they made a really fine sausage sub.

Chevron didn't have much of a history in Maine -- Standard of California operated here under the Calso brand from the mid-forties until 1959, and then converted to Chevron, but were gone from the region by 1975. The photo dates to 1972, and the man in the shorts reveals that unsightly tourist knees are a longstanding problem here.
 
Messages
17,220
Location
New York City
Looks like it might have been designed to fit a big truck, and got appropriated for want of anything better. After looking at that load, I'll never complain about Maine blackflies again.

My guess, they are sisters and their house is spotless with very few modern items in it (based on a similar set of sisters who lived down the street from us where I grew up).
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
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Another one from my neighborhood, a couple blocks up from my street, as seen in the summer of 1948. This station closed in the mid-1950s, and was demolished in the early 1960s to clear the way for a faceless beaverboard ranch house which now decays on the site today.

Esso stations in New England were "Colonial Esso Dealers" due to Jersey Standard being blocked from doing business in the territory by Socony, which controlled the area under the Standard Oil consent decree. Determined to crack the market, Jersey bought out the Boston-based Colonial-Beacon Oil Company and rebranded its stations to Esso in the early 1930s. Colonial Esso stations were noted for the distinctive roof design seen here, and there are still hundreds of surviving specimens of buildings in this style, most of them converted to non-gas-station uses. Some people have even adapted them into serviceable little houses.

There was always some debate as to whether a "Colonial Esso Dealer" outranked a "Standard Esso Dealer," but our Canadian friends always pointed out that an "Imperial Esso Dealer" topped them both.
 

ChazfromCali

One of the Regulars
Messages
126
Location
Tijuana / Rosarito

I've always liked the looks of the Hudson Terraplane. Seeing one of 'em cruising down a dusty southern backroad must have been like seeing an apparition.

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If you've never heard Terraplane Blues by bluesman Robert Johnson recorded ca. 1938, here it is. The double entendre is pretty funny, at least to me. It can be difficult to adjust your ear to his Mississippi Delta patois but you can get the drift. His woman is fine... as a Terraplane.


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http://socalcarculturesblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/1936-hudson-terraplane.html
 

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