Possumblog

"Say, Terry..."

"...surely you did SOMETHING to relax this weekend!"

Oh, silly--of course I did. I typed! Yes, really. You thought maybe I was joking about the moron thing?!

Well, it's like this--I got to thinking the other day it would be nice to have some new designs for the Revolvoblogshop, but maybe something a bit different. I mean, all the other designs are just FLYING out of there (like a dead parrot), so maybe if there were even MORE things no one wanted, it would make a difference.

I like old gas signs and junk like that--what collectors call "petroliana"--and thought it might be nice to see what all I could think up. It's a bit like what Lileks has been doing with his matchbooks, except rather than make up a story to go with a real matchbook, I'd make up a story AND the graphics to go with it.

So, I got to thinking, and I consulted with Luther, our chief mechanic here at the Axis of Weevil World Headquarters, as well as at Revolvoblog Garages. Luther has been in the business a very long time, and thought it might be fun to reminisce with some of the junk he kept from when he ran his own place.

Such as this lovely wall sign, which was professionally done by his boys, Jimmy Neil and Clew. As you can see, Luther was set on being able to fix anything, and chose to experiement with a variety of marques and found them all quite unreasonable. (You should be able to tell this is a fictional sign, because no one actually can fix anything made by Lucas.) He ran his shop in Godly Hollow from 1945 to 1953, 1955 to 1956, 1958 to 1965, 1969 to 1978, March, 1982 to May, 1982, and finally from 1983 to 1996, when he came to work for us. The intervening years he did other things, about which he will not speak.

Some of the stuff he has include several things from the various gasoline companies he sold for over the years. Again, these aren't real companies, but they could be if someone had ever existed to create them. First up, Re-Di-Co, founded in 1908 by three sisters in Gadsden who were tired of the smell of the gasoline of the day (which smells pretty much like it does today) and contracted with a laboratory to produce something for their motorcar that stank less. Work proceded on this until the Great War, when the enterprising scientists of the lab convinced the War Department that an odorless fuel could give them an advantage over the Huns. The government granted the laboratory a stipend of over $3,000, and although the promise never was quite fulfilled, the sisters soon went deaf-of-smell and the Germans were defeated, so it didn't really matter. The company sold just plain old gasoline until 1946.

Dot gas came out in 1940, and was sold in three counties in Alabama and one in Florida. It was inexpensive, and not a very high quality fuel, and sales relied on pleading with customers to buy their gas and on product giveaways, such as Dot dishes with the colorful Dot logo in the center. The company folded in 1950, after being purchased by the Spot Oil Company.

One of the more vigorous of the local oil companies was the Deep South Petroleum Corporation, makers of the Penn-Ala-Tex line of products and boasting of offices in Houston and Birmingham. The offices were both just answering services, and although the products were made of the "finest blended Pennsylvania and Texas crude," it really was nothing more than a mixing and blending operation using other companies' products, located in a warehouse in Huntsville. Something like the way enterprising entrepreneurs take tap water and bottle it, then sell it as something better than plain old tap water, Penn-Ala-Tex prided itself on being able to sell a whole lot of sizzle without much steak. The tagline "It's STA-BIL-ATED!" was meaningless, but the company managed to do quite well for itself with such meaninglessness, until all of the money ran out and the offices moved to Argentina.

Luther also found one of his favorite bits of ephemera, or as he charmingly calls it, "trash," in a booklet from the Cotton State Oil and Gasoline Company, makers of Bama-Lene brand products.

Cotton State's founder and CEO, Wilson L. Peltipuller, was a stickler for modernity and the scientific method, as well as something of a germophobe who valued cleanliness in everything he touched. His insistence on sanitation extended to his products, which he claimed to be so pure as to be potable. The advertising for Bama-Lene touted its healthful benefits for both cars and humans, and to prove the point, he often drank small quantities of his company's gasoline as "a refreshing digestive purgative," would wash his hands in towels dampened with a mixture of naptha and kerosene, and used a mixture of light petrolatum and benzene as a pomade.

Mr. Peltipuller died on April 14, 1956 at the age of 103. His cremation was a five-alarm affair that lasted a week.

We hope you've enjoyed this trip down nonmemory lane, and invite you to think of the "Luther's Garage" Collection when it comes time to buy gifts for your loved ones!

(All graphics copyright Terry Oglesby, obviously.)

Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 22, 2005 02:29 PM