Fill R’ Up #10082

The Story

This old-time country store is full of old gas station memorabilia both inside and out. It was found alongside a winding country road out in the way back of rural America. It’s clearly a beeline straight back in time. Today, no gas or food is sold here, but it’s all about antique gas station and country store hardware of the past. Like a Twilight Zone episode, each step toward it takes twenty years off the calendar…and just a little closer to the yee-haw nirvana of a Moon Pie with a Grape Nehi chaser.

If you’re a younger person, the calendar won’t peel away so quickly. But no matter, these are pretty cool relics from back in the day and the place is a unique magical throwback of sorts.

Around the building, there is quite a collection of retro items that you may have seen used before such as antique gas pumps, metal signs, oil cans, and air pumps. Even the wooden screen door has a metal bread sign in the middle like many an old-time country store. Along with two Esso gas pumps out front, there are metal soda pop signs from yesteryear along with other signs advertising oil products. I even saw a few large metal outdoor thermometers around the other side.

Interestingly, a collection of gas station memorabilia like this has its own special word to describe it: petroliana. I guess you’d have to be a vintage gas station nerd to know it.

The topper in this collection is the old Esso gas pump. It’s a sleek smooth-shouldered Gilbarco gas pump with a glass light globe on top which would complete any reenacted vintage gas station. Another sat to the right out of the frame done up in faded blue. The dials on the equally faded red Esso gas pump show a price of 27 cents a gallon. I think that should give a rough carbon date of around 1970 when it stopped. That’s when you could ride around most of a Saturday night for the pocket change of just under two bucks!

Here is the red Esso gas pump’s wayside companion in blue titled Leadfoot Blue #10080. Red and blue not your flavor? Try a green Sinclair gas pump in the image titled Roxie’s Place #13974 that was found working on an old farm.

Location: in the West Virginia way back near Berkeley Springs. Picture and story ©Andrew Dierks