Oldgas.com's Book Store & Image Gallery

Step back to the day when a visit to the gas station meant service with a smile, a wash of the windshield, and the cheerful question, "Fill 'er up?" Since their unremarkable beginnings as cheap shacks and curbside pumps at the dawn of the automobile age, gas stations have taken many forms and worn many guises: castles, cottages and teepees, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne, clad with wood, stucco, or gleaming porcelain in seemingly infinite variety.
Fill 'er Up: The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations visits 60 Wisconsin gas stations that are still standing today and chronicles the history of these humble yet ubiquitous buildings. The book tells the larger story of the gas station's place in automobile culture and its evolution in tandem with American history, as well as the stories of the individuals influenced by the gas stations in their lives.
Fill 'er Up provides a glimpse into the glory days of gas stations, when full service and free oil changes were the rule and the local station was a gathering place for neighbors. More importantly, Fill 'er Up links the past and the present, showing why gas stations should be preserved and envisioning what place these historic structures can have in the 21st century and beyond. 208 pages, published 2008

Take a drive down memory lane with this rare collection of gasoline station photographs from both public and private collections, touring a much simpler time in American history. Since its inception in the early 1900s, the service station has been an icon of the American roadside and a catalyst of our childhood memories. Included is a brief history of the development of the gasoline station in the United States and details about many of the companies which punctuated the roadsides with their buildings, including the Standard companies, Cities, Mobil, Phillips, Gulf, Shell, Texaco, and Conoco. Filled with over 500 black and white photos, Roadside Memories captures the essence of American life over the first seventy years of this century. Captions provide station location and era identification. These nostalgic photos aid both the collector and historian interested filling up on high-grade service station pumps, classic advertising, architecture, and classic automobiles of the 1920s-70s. 160 pages published 1997

This title was produced in response to the overwhelming interest received from filling station fans and petroliana collectors after the publication of my first book, "The American Gas Station." Packed with razor sharp, full-color images, "Gas Station Memories" is a treasure-trove of hard-to-find gas station artifacts, archival images, and memorabilia. If you yearn to learn about the pumps, oil containers, smoking goods, sales literature, ads, and station attendants of yesteryear, I urge you to pull up to the pump to see for yourself what visiting the neighborhood service station used to be like!