Gas stations

Spin off from the "Nothing new" thread, I thought some of you might a reminder of what it used to be like in the service industry in the US......

A couple years ago I had the opportunity to drive out Route 66, or most of it anyway, from OK City to mid CA before we turned off. Got to see a lot of those old stations. I believe they all are now more of a tourist attraction/photo op. I don't recall any being a working station, although one was a quaint restaurant with pretty decent food, somewhere in Texas I believe.

Marin said:

I thought some of you might need a reminder of what it used to be like in the service industry in the US......

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I grew up in these times! Great old photos!

I've done my share of under the hood fluid checks and windshield washing. But not in the era shown in the photos. You guys are ancient!

Try to run that first photo anywhere today and you'll probably spark a protest march outside your house and someone will paint "Racist" on your front door........

All those photos were before my time but it seems a shame that that era of "automotive innocence" is gone.

Was in Bermuda between the holidays. At one of the gas stations we passed, the pump read 3.37 gallons for $50. That's almost $15 a gallon! Some how $4 per gallon for diesel doesn't seem so bad.

Ted

Thank's Marin,
That's my dream car at the Signal Station.

manyboats said:

Thank's Marin,
That's my dream car at the Signal Station.

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Eric, that looks like a '49 Buick. A good friend of mine is the grand daughter of Walter Marr. Her husband was one of my best friends. Walter Marr eventually settled on Signal Mountain, Tennessee. Many of Buick's engineering drawings originated in the rooms under the eaves of my friends' home. The last pictures of the red car on the website is of my friends, Bill and Sarah, driving the car which they owned. Just thought you would be interested. They had several Buicks including a '32 roadster with an original straight 8 OHV engine. Very smooth. It was way ahead of its time.

All Things Buick: Walter Marr,Buick's First Engineer

Thanks for the link Don. That "Signal" Buick is a 48. I had one like that except it was a fastback sometimes called a torpedo back.
Yes the straight eight Buick is the smoothest car engine Iv'e ever experienced. Go around a corner at 5mph in 3rd (top) gear and pull away without even a slight shudder.

Marin said:

Try to run that first photo anywhere today and you'll probably spark a protest march outside your house and someone will paint "Racist" on your front door........

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But they're working, earning a days pay. Argue about the rate of pay if you wish, that's fair, but they're working.

Rambler said:

But they're working, earning a days pay. Argue about the rate of pay if you wish, that's fair, but they're working.

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That's irrelevant in the eyes of the folks who see a racist behind every tree. Sure they are working. But..... they are obviously being discriminated against because they are doing the unskilled jobs--- washing windshields and headlights--- and they are wearing demeaning bellboy uniforms instead of the status white shirts and trousers of the "mechanics."

Better they go on the government dole and preserve their dignity that be subjected to that kind of discrimination in the working world, right?

What is particularly interesting about this and all the other photos is that they are for the most part all staged. So it wasn't that the photographer happened to shoot a happy-snap of the two black and three white guys working on the car and that was just what they all happened to be doing at the moment. (I'm assuming the guy on the left front wheel was white--- it's impossible to tell in the photo).

Instead the poses and who-does-what were deliberately art directed. Which says a lot about the era in which this particular photo was taken. It was a conscious decision to have the white guys doing the "important" jobs while the black guys did the unskilled "janitorial" jobs.

No big deal--- that's the way it was back then. But if you tried to use that photo today in anything other than a history book--- and maybe even then--- there would be hell to pay I bet, at least from some circles of society.