Big and small, things come and go all the time. But when you're growing up, it's hard to get a fix on what's going on. Only later does it make more sense.
Over the course of ten years in Metro Detroit, I've seen the demise or merger and renaming of all sorts of businesses, everything ranging from department stores to drug stores to record stores to theaters. The grand Detroit Hudson's building was imploded, Jacobsen's is gone, Macy's is here. Perry's Drugstore? In Windsor, there are Esso stations to behold, but not here.
As a kid, I thrilled whenever Dino popped up -- Dino was the happy bright green brontosaurus logo for Sinclair Oil, a company that used to have service stations all over the East and Midwest. I haven't seen one in its original context in over twenty years. There was a closed one in Durham, North Carolina in the 1970s that became a Biscuitville, and an abandoned one in Hillsborough in the early 1980s, guarded with a loaded shotgun by its former attendants. And there were a few Dino signs left stranded on old backroad gas stations near I-80 in Pennsylvania around the same time.
What happened to Sinclair in the East, a company that had started up in 1916? Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) snapped up the company in 1969 and divested its eastern operations, which were picked up by British Petroleum (BP). Sinclair regrouped and continues to operate refineries and service stations in the American West (and western Midwest). As a kid in the East, though, all I knew was that they were already rare by the time I discovered Dino, and very thrilling to come across.
Today's Rune: The Blank Rune.
Happy trails!
3 comments:
What a great logo!
CVS is like the WallMart of drugstores. Arbor Drugs is also long gone.
During my highschool years, a friend of mine worked at Perry Drugstore. They gave him company stock. Years later, I asked him if he had sold it. Nope, he replied, totally worthless. By the way, how many drugs stores do we need?
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