One of the last old gasoline filling stations still standing in this part of the country, it was thought to have been built in the late teens or early twenties. It had two pumps, one for regular gas and one for ethyl, and oil was dispensed from a 50-gallon drum laid on its side on a wooden frame, with a spigot used to fill a quart can to carry to a car. Because there was no electricity there at the time, homes and buildings were lighted by kerosene lamps or lanterns, and kerosene was dispensed from a metal drum into customers' containers. Cold soda pop was sold only when the ice man came by and hard candy was usually available, while chocolate was sold only in winter because there were no refrigerators. During those hard times, a so-called salesman offered the owners counterfeit ten-dollar bill plates as a way to get rich quick. A small hidden room was built onto the back of the station to conceal the printing materials and serve as a workspace, with its only entrance through a back window covered by a solid wooden door. The counterfeit bills were made by pressing one plate in green ink onto paper, letting it dry for 24 hours, and printing the black side the next day. After one of the fake ten-dollar bills was passed, one of the people involved was arrested and traced to the station, where a search uncovered the counterfeit plates. The station was closed and never reopened. Many years later, unrelated to the counterfeiting, an unidentified murder victim was found in the abandoned building, and police could not determine whether he had been killed there or his body had been dumped there.
