PAST GAS
	OCTOBER 2003

by Craig Rogers

Glas Glittering
It was like a scene from a movie. While standing in a yard talking to a companion, the owner of an old nursery scuffed with his heel at a shard of glass glittering in the dirt by his feet. The glass didn’t immediately come free so the man kept working at it with heel and toe to try to free it. However, the man kept uncovering more and more glass until it became obvious that the glittering thing was no fragment at all.

Finally the man got his shovel and dug out from the ground a completely intact 16-in diameter glass sphere. The object was a globe from an old gas pump, dating from the early 20s. Such globes would sit atop the gas pump with a light on the top displaying the name of a particular brand of gas so that people could see it from the highway.The globe subsequently came into my possession and became one of the showpieces of my collection.

Making a connection with the past
I have always enjoyed collecting things. Even when I was a kid I collected baseball cards, Hotwheels, Matchbox cars.... I would display my treasures and trade them with the other kids. Right from the beginning I took pleasure in accumulating articles of various kinds and sharing them with my buddies. My specialty now is gas and oil memorabilia. Acquiring that globe was a real triumph for me. It is a very rare piece. I’ve never seen another one like it.

My passion for gas and oil memorabilia began years ago when I first saw a restored gas pump.

I remember being delighted and astonished at how unique the pump was. The quality of the restoration and the sense of history really appealed to me. I began to research how to find gas pumps that I could restore myself. My research opened before me a world that I had never known existed.

A big rush in collecting memorabilia is locating the rare objects. I visit flea markets, swap meets, go digging in old barns, and sorting through the basements of old houses. I continue to search for old gas pumps, of course, but I also collect anything else that has to do with the industry, including pumps, pens, signs, oil cans, and advertising thermometers. Most recently, I located an old sign advertising Sinclaire gasoline — a company still in business in the Midwest. The Sinclaire gasoline sign has become one of my prize objects connecting me to my love for old relics from the gas and oil industry.

An ancient household oilcan	A memory from Craig’s childhood

Some people might find my delight with gas and oil memorabilia in general, and with gas pumps in particular, to be a little strange. Maybe the appeal can’t be explained to anybody who requires an explanation. All I know is that collecting historical memorabilia somehow establishes a connection between me and the history associated with the objects that I find.

Whatever the explanation, something very satisfying happens to me when I touch something old.

Examining an antique of some kind connects me with a time when daily objects were mechanical and hand-crafted, not like today’s products that are stamped out and crammed full of electronics. The world of the past was simpler, in some ways. You could actually understand how things worked.

Perhaps in the world of the future, however, people like me will be collecting objects such as dustbusters and pre–Hi–Definition TVs with the same sense of reverence that I collect memorabilia from early in the past century.

Winning A firefight against an invincible enemy Much of the satisfaction in my hobby comes not just from collecting but from restoring. Renewing an object to truly pristine condition is like turning back the hands of time. In a sense the process of restoration is like having a time-machine. Restoring an old article permits me to touch the past, even smell it, understand it.... The limitations of our modern world fall away. For example, I restore gas pumps by completely tearing the pumps down to raw frames and then rebuilding them to good-as-new-or-better condition.

A treasure retrieved from the ground

I can imagine exactly how they looked many decades ago when they were brand new standing by the side of some gravel road. Fortunately, there are many distributors throughout the United States specializing in this hobby who supply replacement globes, glass, fittings, etc. for these antique gas pumps. I suppose I derive the same satisfaction from this process as other people get from restoring old houses or automobiles.

I put a lot of work into my restoration efforts and really do make the object better than new, in many cases. When finished, I have the feeling that I’ve renewed something that otherwise might have been considered junk.

I’ve given it a new existence and have extended its life into the future. Of course the deprivations of time will eventually win the war, but I’m winning some battles! And that feels good!

Making human connections
Collecting gas and oil memorabilia provides an effective channel for meeting really interesting people. Some of my fellow hobbyists are ‘old timers’ who worked in the old filling stations and who provide real-life descriptions of what life was really like back in those days. The wonderful stories about the past that these people tell help bring the memorabilia alive.

Many people are surprised to learn that thousands of people collect gas and oil memorabilia as a hobby. We have our own magazine, Check the Oil, which publishes all the memorabilia and advertises where all the bashes are going to be. We even have a marvelous website (www.oldgas.com), which provides some serious tools for communicating among hobbyists in this field. We also have collectors’ conferences, called ‘gas bashes,’ which are held throughout the country. Any person who enjoyed traveling could attend a couple of these bashes every month.

The last gas bash I attended was sponsored by a collector, Fred Stokes, of Santa Rosa, who displayed his collection of 10,000+ antique oil cans, no two were alike. Fred had all 10,000 on display, arranged by size and in alphabetical order. Maintaining them in alphabetical order means that adding a can to the collection necessitates moving to the right all the cans below the new entry on the alphabet.

I imagine ol’ Fred would be happier by now to get a can from “Zeno Brother’s Oil and Gas Services,” than to get one from “AAA Automotive Industries”! On the West Coast alone there are probably six gas bashes every year, some with over 2,000 people in attendance. Many people come by just to take a look. A gas bash has something for everybody; you don’t have to be a hobbyist in the field to enjoy it.

The gas bashes provide hobbyists like me with a look at some of the new stuff coming into the pipeline — treasures of the oil and gas industry that people have recently located.

Gas bashes are typically sponsored by collectors who put their collections on display for the people attending. Some of these advanced collectors actually own properties with old, restored gas stations still on them. In some cases restorations are made to an unbelievable level of detail.

My overt purpose for attending gas bashes, of course, is to advance myself in my hobby. Beyond that, however, getting together with people having the same interests as me and trading stories, half-truths, and lies with them provides great entertainment. These gas bash events are always occasions for fellowship and amusement — possibly the most innocent fun that a man can have in life. We laugh a lot. Life is particularly good when you are at a gas bash!

Spending time in the company of friendly ghosts
I think all collectors have difficulty putting into words the actual nature of the payoff we get from collecting and restoring objects from the past. When I touch one of my gas pumps I can imagine the past. I can picture the pump in its lofty position as the central object of a little filling station or one–man garage by the side of some gravel road or 2–lane blacktop.

I try to see in my mind all the people who stood by that pump before me — stretching decades into the past. Who were they? What were they like? How did they dress? What struggles were they facing? What became of them? Are any of them still alive?

All those ghosts are with me again now as I polish the glass on one of my old pumps and study once more the ancient counters displaying the gallons and price. All those people from the past somehow connect to me in the present as we all gather around this wonderful antique that I’ve collected.

Craig has been a collector for 12 years. He writes as a Contributing Editor for 110° magazine. You can reach him at gaspump@pacbell.net