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PETE HARRIS
GAS STATION NOSTALGIA: It's odd, I suppose, for one who doesn't drive to grow sentimental over old service stations, but I find them and the cars my parents owned over the years (especially a blue 1937 four-door Ford) firmly fixed in my mental scrapbook, One in particular I remember, circa 1940, was a Shell station in Lansing, Ont., wherein resided a reddish dog, mostly Irish terrier, with only three legs, True, His name was Jiggs and so, when our family liberated from the Humane Society pound a reddish dog of mixed ancestry, but mostly Irish terrier, no other name would do but Jiggs. Both Jiggses are long gone to that special place reserved for service station mutts and kids’ favorite dogs, The Shell station is gone. Hell, even the Lansing I knew and loved is gone, But the memories linger on.
What brought all this on was a piece in the Jan, 2 New York Sunday News Magazine by a chap named John Margolies who obviously collects old filling stations, or rather photos of them, “I love old gas stations, " Margolies' article begins, and right there he had me hooked. “I've cruised all over the continent searching out surviving great gas stations from the ‘golden era' (1920-1950)... if you head into the boondocks on secondary roads, driving once again becomes the adventure it used to be, and you'll start coming across Cities Service signs, Sinclair dinosaurs, sleek porcelain enamel jobbies, and sometimes, but very rarely, incredible relics from the teens and 20s, "
Margolies traces the history of the gas station from the turn of the century to the present day and the article is profusely illustrated with a variety of places he has photographed in his travels, including an old Joy station in Toronto which now pumps gas under the Premium banner.
There's only one point where I find myself disagreeing with him, He says, "Early on, .. the gas station evolved into the symbol of its company and products," And, he quotes a Gulf spokesman as saying: “Since you didn't see the gas itself, the building became the product's package. " Ah, but you did see the gas itself, in those pumps with tall glass cylinders on top which the attendant filled with a hand pump and which, as the level fell, told him exactly how much he had put into each car's gas tank.
Margolies concludes: “Few value the old gas stations as humble monuments of our culture, Indeed they have been put down for years as ugly, dirty, smelly and noisy, I think some should be preserved as historic landmarks, As independent operators and neighborhood stations disappear, as station after station closes, these examples of Americana will become extinct like the nickel candy bar and the cigar store Indian, "
And that may be sooner than you think, John, if the energy situation keeps deteriorating.
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