This year's annual (since 1986) convention was an event of many distractions, from once again the hottest days of the year, to:
Best Quote: Royal Schiller to Jerry Keyser, "...as I see it, the worst part of dying is that I'm going to miss my own auction."
Best Display: Shawn Watson's portable, fold-up gas station. (pictured
here)
Longest Distance Driven: Warren and Audry Anderson from Tucon, Arizona. Warren wrote after arriving home, "... enroute we found a visible pump intact on old U.S. 54 in New Mexico - a nice conclusion."
Hard Luck Awards: all those coming from the east who suffered through the closed I-70 detour. Imagine closing the major coast-to-coast Interstate for over half a year because the old, abandoned coal mines underneath the highway were collapsing and taking the pavement with them. (Or should it be, can you imagine NOT closing the highway?)
Highest Priced Item Sold at the Convention: Bob Shaw brought his beautiful 1939 Chevrolet tank truck to display and ended up accepting an offer he couldn't refuse. (California will be the truck's new home.) -View tanker image-
Gem of the Show: Warren Anderson's original artwork, "Great Nozzle in the Sky" (See the March '95 CTO! cover.) A lucky fellow from Kentucky who made the trip to Columbus just to see it, took it home.
Best Rumor of the Show: there was a gate crashing weasel loose, seen and reported by many, but successful in avoiding capture.
Image
at right: R .V.Witherspoon and friend caught in the middle of swapping some
tall tales.
Hottest of the Event: (tie) the weekend and any quality porcelain gas and oil signs.
Biggest Gambler of the Show: Ziggy Zeigler's parking lot dispersal auction of excess items from his collection. This, of course, leads to the Biggest Question of the Show: was Ziggy smiling on his way home?
Best New Convention Event: the Thursday night poolside cookout, featuring lots of good food and good fellowship, attested to and certified by expert Bob Shaw.
Best Convention Event: (tie) the Swap meet and Warren Anderson's slide presentation "San Diego, California to Savannah Beach, Georgia via U.S. 80, a Twenty Year Study." Warren took his attentive audience more than two thousand miles in less than two hours, stopping at numerous roadside signs, buildings and other places of interest along the way. Warren's trip can never be duplicated as parts of U.S. 80 have been dropped from the federal highway system, replaced by I-10.
It Pays to Procrastinate Winners: the convention registrants who requested swap spaces after all spaces, inside and out, were sold-out and who were accomodated at the 11th hour under the shade trees in the poolside courtyard.
Best Suggestion Box Item: Dave Mercer's suggestion for a container on the show grounds for the disposal of the oil from the cans being emptied for the flight home.
Best Endorsement of the Convention: there were gas and oil show promoters from at least 7 events in attendance.
More images from Columbus (59k)
Text and images copyright 1995 by "Check the Oil!"
magazine, used with permission.
The gas station collectible supersite
Published to the web 5/10/96, updated with images 5/24/96
Petroliana