“The Shop”
Stanfield
on the Corner of West Stanly & Main
By Lisa Geraci
T
he garage on the corner
of West Stanly and Main
stands as a tribute to
Stanfield residents.
Memories are painted across
the off-white brick and displayed
on the lawn in the form of
vintage cars, signs and gas pumps.
The old service station itself is
transformed along with the town
as buildings disintegrate, painted
billboards fade, and generations
faze out.
Stanfield history is slowly
being savored in this iconic garage
with the help of owners John
David Smith and his wife Sally.
The building, which the Smiths plainly call
“The Shop,” was originally erected in 1929,
the brick laid as a masonry project by Stanfield
High School brick-class students long before
the school was demolished in 1977.
It was called Love’s Garage, John
remembers. “Back in the day, it was a service
center that sold gas. Claude Love, the original
owner, had a roof that stepped down, a flat
kind, like so many of the buildings down
here in Stanfield. This truck garage right here
used to be just a window. There was a porch
that came out and underneath; it had visible
gas pumps. I mean the old glass top, gravity,
clear tanks. You could see 10 to 15 gallons of
gas sloshing around up top. There were two,
probably 10-feet high.”
John recollects a childhood filled of
sweeping dirt floors for extra coins and playing
pool with his buddies –for a time period the
garage doubled as a pool hall. The nostalgia
of Love’s Garage always fascinated him, John
recalls.
“When Bill Shoupe bought this place from
Carl’s daughter in-law in the 70s, I started
aggravating the hell out of him for it. While I
helped Bill knock the roof off, I pestered him
every day about selling it to me. Every year I
kept on him. And, finally one day, he asked me
if I was ready. I was like ready for what? And he
said he was ready to sell.”
Ever since the Smiths became the new
owners back in 2002, they were committed
to not only keeping the history of the garage
alive, but also incorporating
mementos of the small town into
the building decor. Outsiders
may be mystified why they are
drawn to the old service station,
but for Stanfield residents the
symbolism presented in “The
Shop” is a little more transparent.
The front has vintage Sinclair
signs embellishing the walls and
little dinosaurs grazing through
antique painted brick. The West
Stanly Street side is decorated
with Tigers trotting between old
gas pumps and standing beside
lost ESSO signs. John states, “I
split it up. I put Sinclair on the
front of the building and Esso on the side.
They were my two favorite gas stations growing
up. We lived in the country when I was little,
they had an ESSO station there. It was a
little bitty block of a building, Homer Talley’s
service station. The Tiger advertisements and
the ‘Fill up with the Tiger’ on the gas pump,
I really loved. But then, when we moved to
town, I hung around the Sinclair Station right
here on Main. They fixed my bike tires, and
who can forget old Bud Honeycutt? We would
do our thing, drink drinks and sit around.
I couldn’t make up my mind which service
station I wanted to make, so, I made them
both. I just did it because the Sinclair station
was long gone, and Homer’s old Esso was torn
down.”
WEST STANLY – THE MAGAZINE | WINTER 2020
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