Ever since the invention of the automobile, people have been asking, “Where do I take my car to get it worked on?” Even 70 years ago, when Pea Ridge was a town of only 200 people or so, we had several businesses devoted to working on cars. Although the piston-driven engine fueled by gasoline has prevailed in motor vehicles since the turn of the last century, numerous changes have come about in how that basic gasoline engine is configured and how servicing is done.
Today, refueling a vehicle is normally a do-ityourself operation. We pump our own gas, as we say. Most “filling stations” today are self-service stations. In days gone by, before the 1960s, the filling station attendant did the gas pumping for you, along with other personal services like checking your engine oil level, “adding a quart,” checking the radiator coolant, cleaning your windshield,correcting tire pressure and so on.
Even in our earlier days, there was a bit of specialization about service stations and repair shops. A service station, or filling station, as we commonly called them, majored in refueling cars and trucks, with several other services available when needed.
Floyd’s Hall’s station at the northwest corner of the downtown intersection was that kind of station.
Floyd fixed flats, did lube jobs, changed oil, sold coal oil, supplied antifreeze, and so on, but he didn’t get into major repairs.
Floyd’s station was the little downtown fieldstone building built in 1930 by Clyde “Pea Ridge” Day, the major league baseball pitcher from our community. Floyd was sellingESSO gasoline and oil when I was really young, but sometime around 1950 he switched over to Texaco, and the picturesque little downtown station remained as a Texaco station until the 1990s.
For more major car repairs in the early 1940s, we used to go to Johnny Buttry’s Garage, located just south of the downtown intersection on the east side. I think Johnny Buttry owned the whole building which reached from the corner intersection south to the funeral home. His garage was the south part of that building. When we moved back to Pea Ridge in 2002, an antique store was operating at that location. I think it is now owned by Jerry and Jackie Collins. As I recall, Johnny Buttry was a general mechanic, ready to take on most any car repair, whether it be a routine tune-up or a major engine overhaul, chassis repair or transmission work. Johnny also had gas pumps out atthe street, selling DX gasoline and oil products.
After the end of World War II in 1945, Jack and Joe Lasater came home to Pea Ridge and set up a garage and service station at what was then the east end of downtown Pea Ridge. Until about 1920, a nice three-story hotel was operated on that site by the Si Martin family. The hotel burned about 1920.
I think the building that replaced the hotel was at first a mill for grinding grain, possibly owned by C.H. Mount. The Lasater brothers established a garage and station, selling gasoline and doing all kinds of car repairs. They operated a Phillip 66 station in the north front, and their car repair business opened to the east side, on what we call Davis Street today. They kept their business in that location until a few years into the 1950s. In 1950, the state Highway Department had reworked the highway from Pea Ridge to Rogers, rerouting the highway from what we call Ryan Road over to what we now call Curtis Avenue.
Jack and Joe Lasater must have foreseen how Pea Ridge would develop, because in the 1950s they moved out to the Arkansas Hwy. 94/Arkansas Hwy.
72 intersection. That was “way out of town” back then. They re-established their service station and repair shop on the corner now occupied by the White Oak Station. They also began selling new and used cars. When Jack and Joe made their move, I think the only other business out that way was the drive-in theater, where Arvest Bank sits today.
Amazingly, what was to us a “way-out-of-town” location has become the new town center of Pea Ridge.
Also about 1948 Charles Hardy built a new garage just south of the Luther Martin Grocery Store. In later years the grocery and Charles’s garage building became partof Easley’s Hardware & Lumber business. Charles Hardy handled Lion gasoline and oil. Charles was a fine mechanic and ran a good business. I think about 1950 he built Pea Ridge’s first fire truck, installing the pump, water tank and other fire fighting equipment on a 1948 Dodge truck.
We used to call men who worked on cars “mechanics.” Today we are likely to hear them called “automotive technicians.” Many of us in the 1950s were what we called “shade tree mechanics.” That doesn’t work so well on today’s computerized cars and trucks.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 12/12/2012