Pumped up kicks: Gas station memories from along the way

Stopping for gas is a necessary, albeit mundane, task while on a long road trip, especially depending on how much diet soda you've consumed along the way. We strive to enjoy every second of being on the road, though, and have sought out some pretty awesome petrobilia -- sometimes well-preserved antiques, especially along Route 66 in Illinois, but more often than not the melancholy, decaying, abandoned filling stations of yesteryear, often left to rot like so many bald tires. So here, without further ado, is proof that there's no fuel like an old fuel.

 Illinois

 Illinois

 Illinois

 Virginia

 Utah

 Pennsylvania

 Illinois

 Colorado

 Nebraska/Wyoming state line

 California

Arizona

Strike up the abandoned: Awesome photography by Noel Kerns

These pictures are all copyright Noel Kerns. Aren't they something?

I've always found abandoned places compelling and I started taking pictures of them back when I was a college student. On our trips down secondary roads, we've seen a lot of these places -- melancholy reminders of what used to be  -- and I'm fascinated at how long some of these sad places stick around, rotting away year after year (check out some we've blogged about here). Lots of other people like to take pictures of these kinds of places, but very few have the talent and skill of a Mr. Noel Kerns, a Dallas-based photographer who mostly focuses on Texas ghost towns, decommissioned military bases and old gas stations, cafes and roadside dwellings, all photographed at night under a full moon. Just finding these places takes skill and time, but then he waits until the perfect evening and lights his subjects in an incredibly artistic and surreal way, giving the images a dreamlike quality he calls "light painting". He's got a book out, "Nightwatch - Painting with Light" and a really extensive Flickr sight. Keep up the good work, Mr. Kerns, and long live decay.

Running on empty: Some abandoned gas stations seen along the way

There's something beautiful and melancholy about a once-thriving gas station left to rot among the weeds, like so many bald tires, its pumps forever reflecting the prices of the day they died. That's oil, folks.

Pump and Circumstance: Bisbee, Arizona's Indian Motorcycle building

Bisbee, Arizona sits 90 miles southeast of Tucson in the Mule Mountains on the Mexican border and is a very cool place. It was a huge mining town in the early 1900s and had the largest population between San Francisco and St. Louis at that time. Bisbee continued to be a mining community until the 1970s but today it is mostly known as a funky and free-spirited artist community. You could spends days walking around taking pictures of all the cool old Victorian buildings and their colorful inhabitants and their pursuits, the most spectacular of which is the Shady Dell vintage travel trailer park, which I'll get to in a future post.

We got onto a quiet avenue somewhat ironically called Main Street that led us to some beautifully melancholy street scenery. Several posts are needed to do it all justice, so here's the first one. We spotted an abandoned-looking (save for a satellite dish) red brick building with a gorgeous Indian Motorcycle sign painted on its exterior. Out front were two old Texaco pumps and a 1940s yellow Chrysler taxi cab, all just sitting there for the benefit of no one in particular. I love places like this, seeming caught in a time vacuum while the rest of the world hurries by.

Dunkle's Gulf Station of Bedford, Pennsylvania: A little Dunkle do ya.

Another gem along Pennsylvania's Lincoln Highway is Dunkle's Gulf, a sparkling art deco filling station. It was opened in 1933 by Dick Dunkle and is still in operation today, offering full-service repairs and gasoline. It sits there like a little castle, gleaming and saying "hey look me over." It's too bad the pumps are quasi-modern, but this is a small concession to having such a beautiful living, breathing roadside palace from the past in our midst. Could you fill 'er up with Ethyl please?

The beautiful decay of McLean, Texas

A cool British dude who calls himself The Old Nail has a great blog with the wonderful title of "Beautiful Decay." (http://rackandruin.blogspot.com/). I love that phrase. There's something poignant and melancholy about seeing something once new and gleaming falling into disrepair and neglect. We passed through the little town of McLean, Texas, 75 miles east of Amarillo, on I-40 and Old Route 66, in 2004 and it had some awesome decay. According to their website, "in 1927, McLean profited from the oil boom, becoming a major shipping point for area livestock, gas, and oil. And, in the very same year, Route 66 insured the town’s growth for the next several decades. During the golden age of Route 66, McLean boasted 16 service stations, six motels and numerous cafes. Oklahoma based Phillips Petroleum Company built its first Texas service station in McLean in 1927. By 1940, McLean had six churches, a newspaper, fifty-nine businesses, and a population of more than 1,500." Unfortunately, today McLean isn't as prosperous as it was in those glory days, but it's still a very cool place to visit for fans of roadside Americana. They've done an awesome job restoring that 1927 Phillips gas station, and they have one of the best quirky museums I've ever been to: The Devil's Rope Museum, which bills itself as the world's largest barbed wire historical museum. I'll get to those places in a later post, but first here's some very cool abandoned gas stations. Here's McLean's website: http://www.mcleantexas.org/index.html