Camera Talk

Some repurposed or abandoned stations in and around the small town of Gretna, VA.

Zorki-6, Jupiter-12, Kodak Tri-X 400


Small Town Glass Shop by P F McFarland, on Flickr



404 Main Street by P F McFarland, on Flickr



Small Town Glass by P F McFarland, on Flickr



Former Country Store and Gas 1 by P F McFarland, on Flickr



Former Country Store and Gas 2 by P F McFarland, on Flickr



Former Country Store and Gas 3 by P F McFarland, on Flickr



Harold's by P F McFarland, on Flickr


PF

It's a good way to know how things are going over there. I can't compare with any place I have lived, if I came back to my small town the same gas stations in the same place. Topography doesn't allow to create new routes (small valleys).
Thank you, Phil, for sharing these photos and places.

Good documents, PF, if a bit sad.

I re-read recently an old favorite, "Little Golden America", a book written in 1935 by two Russian writers, Ilf and Petrov. They crossed the U.S. in a Ford, from New York to California and back, and the book records their impressions. They also took pictures (with a Leica). They were most impressed by gas stations, which they considered the symbol of America. Wonder what they would write if they did the same exercise today.

Thanks, Alex and Julio. The thing about gas stations is business norms change over time, and most of your "Mom and Pop" operations died out many years ago as they couldn't compete with the corporations, or didn't want to change how they did business. The country store type went away for many reasons at once. Sears took most of their goods business, chain groceries in town took the food sales, then the gasoline sales dried up because vehicles started getting better mileage, and didn't need to make as many stops anymore. Plus, the old country store could not compete on price either.

Some gas stations that converted to doing only vehicle repairs did so because they didn't want to pay for the new required underground tanks that the government was mandating to combat gasoline and diesel leaking into the ground water.

Businesses come and go all the time, and there were probably too many gasoline stations in lots of places. I've seen small operators that last for over fifty years because they have great customer service, and new places that last only a couple of years because the corporation can't squeeze another nickle of profit out of the place to satisfy the hedge fund stockholders. But it's the small town, and country crossroad that suffered the most in any economic downturn, and you can only go through so many cycles of that before giving up. It's just the way it goes.

PF

Also, a great many gas stations went out of business during the oil crises of the mid-70s; once shuttered, it took years to replace them in part because of the costs of remediation associated with redevelopment. In Texas, land was cheap enough that it was easier to start fresh somewhere than deal with an old "fillin' station". With sprawl, however, a lot of those old locations were enveloped and eventually reclaimed. Took a surprisingly long time, though.

Robert