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Since I am still recovering from leg surgery from that damn gas pump accident, I was laying on the couch with my leg propped up looking thru Wayne Henderson's 100 years of Gas Stations book. Then I started using Goggle Maps on my phone to punch up addresses and see if some of the old stations were still there. When he listed an address or cross street's sometimes you could still find the building. Sometimes they were remodeled so much they bore no resemblance to the original structure.

Which brings me to the pictures I have posted. I grew up a half block south of this station and drank a lot of pop from the Coke machine (more about that in a minute). My earliest memories of this station is about 1963 when my good friend Bruce Trump's dad and uncle ran it, it was "Bob and Jacks Texaco". The picture is from 1934. I distinctly remember the station using Tokheim 39's when I was a kid. Although the current picture does not even look like the same building I can most assuredly tell you it is.

This station sits in my home town of Knightstown Indiana on route US 40 at the corner of Jefferson and Main streets. Before I-70 was built I would set up at the station on Memorial Day late afternoon and watch all the traffic heading east from the Indy 500. I remember Bruce telling me that one day a limo pulled up and the driver got out and wanted to see the Womens restroom, it must have passed the inspection because the driver opened the back door and Phyllis Diller got out to use it.

I don't know why but I spent a lot of time up there but I did, hanging out, watching all the action. I can still remember how it smelled. I also bought my share of candy bars up there also out of the vending machine. Oh, about the Coke machine, it was a Vendo 110....my buddies and I were camping out in our back yard and went up there in the middle of the night to get a pop. Somehow we discovered that the machine would dispense the bottles without putting in more coins. Leave it say that if the pop would have been alcohol we would have been drunk on our butts and not sobered up for a week. But since it was pop we did get the belly ache...bad. The next day I was telling my mom about our "good fortune?" and mom marched me up there and I had to pay for all we drank...lesson learned, don't recall my age.

My mom was a professional photographer and she took a lot of pictures of the local gas stations. I will have to work on a then and now series.

Tom.

2014_1126LITERATURE0002.JPG 2014_1126LITERATURE0001.JPG

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Pretty cool. After reading this I might look up my own childhood memory local gas station.

I love using Google Maps like that. I have located current street views from classic movies where major scenes took place then visit the locations in person while in California.

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Great story Tom. I was born too damn late.

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Tom

How long ago did they change the front. Man seems like yesterday when I saw it as Bob & Jack's Texaco...

Doug

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cool picture & story... cool


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Well Tom lifting that book is a good work out regimen! I beat you wished you had those pumps in that picture. My pop story involved the slider soda machines. If you could find a machine and outta sight you could drink a pop in 5-6 seconds if you had a bottle opener and a straw. LOL unfortunately I found that shop keepers like mothers have eyes in all sorts of strange places!

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Looking forward to the then and now pic's.




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Wish I could go back in time and steal all the pumps and signs in that pic. Love the Texaco and Havoline oil can racks.

Last edited by nam5072; Thu Nov 27 2014 09:16 AM.
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Great story Tom! Thanks for sharing

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Tom;
Always wondered. The "Restored" Texaco that use to be in Knightstown, was it a former Standard building?
It was located at the corner of Brown and Washington.
I have some pictures of it somewhere, can't find them right now.
Chuck

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That Texaco display pump in the middle (think that's what there called ?)is the coolest thing I've ever seen !!


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Its a Wayne 50 display case pump!


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Doug, It must have been sometime around 2008, not exactly sure. I was so mad when they ruined a land mark by mucking up the outside, it seemed to happen overnight. I can see the interior being remodeled to suit the business but to do what they did to the outside was just ignorant in my opinion. Where was the Historic Landmarks Foundation when we needed them.

Chuck, Bruce's Texaco museum as you know has long since been disbanded. When I was a kid walking to school in the 1st grade it was a DX, we would sing the DX Super Boron jingle when we walked by, hum, I was a gas geek at an early age and did not realize it till just now, writing this brought back the memory.

Actually when the station was build it was Bruce's grandfather that opened it as an EnArCo in the 1930's. I remember Bruce sorting out some stuff at his parents home after his father passed. He found an old check register from his grandfathers EnArCo station and saved it because it was a memento from his family. Fast forward to when Bruce bought the old EnArCo/DX station, he was cleaning out the attic, did not find anything of real value except that he found a box of cancelled checks that matched the check register he found at his dads. I thought that was just too weird. I will have to look for some old pictures of the place.
Tom.


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I remember being there in the mid ninetys or so when Bruce had it. Not sure but I think he had a Talladega in the garage area. Ron Lease-Collector ;;;;;;;;;;

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Here are two I took back in 2002. No one around that day to get in and look around. Thought I had a shot of the inside bay area but not finding it.
Someone in Knightstown told me he sold all this to a someone in Evansville, Indiana and the guy set one up down there. I delivered gas to the Speedway (former Cheker) in Knghtown for almost 30 years.
Chuck

Knightstown Texaco002w.jpg Knightstown Texaco001a.jpg
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