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IPFS News Link • History

Remember the Service Station?

• Eric Peters Autos

We have gas stations now.

We used to have service stations.

These were places were you could buy gas and repairs. They had bays and racks and mechanics on hand to fix whatever was wrong with your car.

Today, they have racks of soda and candy bars.

If you can believe it, service stations – when they existed – offered . . . service.  When you rolled up to the pump, a pump jockey – sometimes in uniform – would come out to offer to pump your gas for you and also check the tires and the oil.

For free.

Today, there might be an air pump off in an inconvenient part of the parking lot that will work  . . . if you feed it quarters. You pump your own gas – often while having to listen captively  to some obnoxious infomercial at the pump, which doesn't give you the option to turn it off.

Back in the day – it was a long time ago but memory lingers – service stations would give away things like drinking glass sets emblazoned with the company logo and other such to reward customers for their patronage. If you were a kid in those days, you looked forward to a fill-up much as today's kids look forward to whatever they're going to get in their Happy Meal at McDonalds (along with the juvenile diabetes).


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