This classic Shell filling station, Skip's Garage, is on the Eastern (Northern) side of Russellville, on the North (West) side of US Hwy 62.
Founded in 1949, there is a pair of 1950s era gasoline pumps at left.
I wanted to include the gas pumps, but there was something obstructing my line of sight.
Interesting Video(short) with Views of Skip's GarageSkip's Garage November_2018 Street ViewI don't know where all of those vehicles came from nor why they are there; it is impossible to get a good photo with all of this late model junk cluttering up the scene.
I have a very good Google Street View screenshot with nary a car in sight; but, I was unsure whether it was "legal" to post it.
We need to drive one of the classics up there and photograph it at the pumps with the gas hose in the filler and a greasy uniformed attendant checking the dipstick; either the 1949 Roadmaster or the 1965 Impala 4-door Hardtop.
There are a bejillion photos of this place on the internet.
38° 52' 9.65" North Parallel
83° 47' 13.25 West Meridian
Elevation: 953'
Westbound US Hwy 62
Russellville, Ohio
Brown County
Sunday_19-December-2021
Photo Taken through the glass of a Moving Vehicle
I grew up in a filling station very much like this one, except only about a fourth as big.
Cut this one at the flagpole and you would have the width of our place.
We had those exact same lights at the pumps.
We had two rooms, making our place twice as long as it was wide; this place is much longer/deeper.
We couldn't get a vehicle inside and all work was done outside, regardless of the weather.
We had a "Grease Pit" out back for accessing underneath vehicles.
For those of you who have no idea what a grease pit was, it consisted of a five-foot-deep concrete hole in the ground, with steps going down into it.
At ground level, there were concrete ramps at each end such that a vehicle could drive onto the ramps and straddle the pit.
You went down the steps into the pit and could work on anything under the car; change the oil; check the transmission; grease the rear-end.
We replaced clutches, swapped transmissions, you name it, outside, in the weather, with our necks in a constant kink to keep from banging our heads onto something.
When I was first big enough to pump gas, Regular gasoline (I think it was 104 Octane) was 19.9 cents per gallon; a dollar would fill a five-gallon can.
I filled lots and lots of five-gallon cans as 90% of the farm tractors were gas-burners.
Later, the price creeped up to 24.9 for Regular and 27.9 for Premium and stayed there for years; it was about 1973 before it started inching up again.
You would not believe how many of those one-gallon glass jugs, the kind with a finger-ring at the neck, that I popped the cork and filled with gasoline for lawn-mowers and the like; it was not uncommon at all to put gasoline in a large-mouth glass gallon "Pickle Dog" jar.
I have pedaled a bicycle for miles, pulling a push-mower, with a pickle-dog jar of gas under my arm, to mow some old reprobates yard for two dollars and they begrudged paying me that.
I had to be really careful; as, some old bunch of bullies would come along and dart at me with their car, trying to make me drop and bust my jug of gas.
My father operated this business from his discharge from the Korean War until the late 1980s
The 1952 Ford dates the photo to sometime later than 1952; the main gas pumps were changed to a different style in the late sixties.
This is the only known photo we have and the photo itself has an interesting history; a few years ago, the county PVA (Property Valuation Administrator or tax assessor if you will) said he found this photo in a bunch of old records that were being discarded and thought we might be interested in it; the two Xs across the photo denote that the building no longer exists on the property.
The old photo was in very poor condition and was covered with black splotchy mildew, probably from years of being in the humid damp confines of the old courthouse basement.
My work is by no means perfect, but I don't think I hurt it any.
Here is what I had to work with :
and here is my attempt at rescue:
It is hard to believe that in all the many years we lived in a house-trailer behind the building and I was born within 300 yards of the place and grew up there, that this is the only photograph we have.
By the way, note the two pumps on the left of the photo, one is Kerosene and the other is Coal Oil; and, we sold quite a bit of both as many in our community were still without electricity and used these products in their "coal oil" lamps; the Kerosene was for the more well-to-do; it cost more but yielded a much brighter light and did not smoke up the globes so badly; the less-well-to-do (the majority of the community) had to settle for the less expensive coal oil.
Thanks for looking.
