Picturing the past

I was contacted last week by someone looking for a photo of the Rebel Maid, the drive-in restaurant that those who were young in the 1950s and 1960s say was one of Shelbyville's major teen hangouts.

So I spent part of my lunch hour Monday searching the T-G's photo negative files.

The Rebel Maid is still in hiding, but I'm still looking -- and found a few other photos of old local businesses you might remember. I'll run them in my blog over the next few weeks.

This time I'll indulge myself and post a photo of my grandfather's gas station.

The negative file is labeled December 1963. This was apparently when my grandparents, Morton and Lilly Overcast, were completing their new Texaco station at the intersection of Lane Parkway and Cannon Boulevard, as that area was being redeveloped during Shelbyville's gigantic urban renewal project. They'd been on North Main Street.

Note one major aspect missing: No gas pumps, even though a Texaco tanker's parked in front of the building. They must have been open for business, though, since a truck's on the grease rack and you can see someone behind the counter on the right side of the building. Can't tell if it's my grandfather or not.

I well remember the Chevrolet truck at far left -- my grandfather's old tan service truck, which he was still driving well into the 1970s.

He built a new garage and got out of the gas business in the mid-1970s, when he saw the trend coming toward convenience stores and away from service stations.

This building was eventually remodeled into a convenience store, and was later torn down for another store -- which was demolished last year and replaced by the latest of a series of Quik Mart convenience stores.