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February 1940. "Gas station along Highway U.S. 50. Winchester, Virginia." Medium format negative by Arthur Rothstein for the FSA. View full size.
Anyone who can explain the "3N" and "R" shields to your foreign visitors?
[Explained here. -tterrace]
I located four other photos of this particular station, the first of which, linked below, contains an image of Mr. Sirbaugh himself.
The price on the left pump is 20 cents a gallon, which works out to $3.52 today. The middle pump is showing 22 cents, or $3.87 today. Guess I shouldn't complain quite as much about gas prices!
This shows three different generations of pumps. The oldest is in the middle. You filled the bowl with how much gas was to be sold then released it with the handle. The Tokheim on the left is the second generation. It had a dial to show amount sold but you had to compute the total sale. The one on the right is the newest. It showed amount of gallons and amount of sale.
That the rest room is registered! I remember seeing those signs when I was a kid.
I wonder if one of the young ladies on the sidewalk could have been Ginny Hensley, who would later go on to be known as Patsy Cline. Winchester was her home town. According to the map, the house she lived in with her mother on S Kent St was 5 blocks from the gas station.
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