Closed

Closed

Americana in its rawest form. That is what I thought when I first saw this 1920's style Filling Station/Cafe located in Kent Oregon, along US Highway 97 some 100 miles north of Bend and about 40 miles south of the Columbia River which divides Washington and Oregon. While the building has long since been abandoned, what intrigued me most were the gas pumps. The pumps have been hand painted over several times in an assortment of colors, hiding the once colorful corporate pride of the Phillips 66 gasoline brand. There are only three digits for displaying the price, one of which was for the antiquated 9/10th of a cent. These pumps still had the price of 66 9/10 cents. The gasoline brand logos have almost all faded or been scratched off. Remnants of any affiliation with corporate America have all but disappeared. One small sticker on the bottom left hand reverse side of these pumps still says Phillips 66. Octane ratings read 100. That was equivalent to the aviation fuel used in the crop duster planes back in the day.

This part of Oregon is heavily agricultural and this area in particular was dedicated to raising hops. Hops are primarily used as a stability and flavoring agent in beer. Hops have been a vital crop in this central Oregon prairie town since the 1940's. The down-home country style design of the building is reminescent of the gasoline station/cafes of the 1920's and 30's, but I suspect this building was built in the 1940's. The cafe even advertised to the crop dusting pilots overhead with a sign that has long since weathered away. Painted in white on the shingled gable roof read the words: EAT. High atop the front roof of this commercial venture is a plastic Orange Crush soda pop sign. The only sign of any meaning that still remains. Owned and worked by a husband and wife for many years, when the business started to fail the husband hired on to work in the hops field to make ends meet while the wife remained at the cafe. This rest stop oasis along this lonely stretch of the Sherman Highway finally closed when the wife fell ill and found herself unable to keep up the cafe or pump the gas. The husband found himself tending to his wife's health and lost interest in keeping the business open. Closed.

The photo was taken with a Nikon D800 in the late afternoon on Christmas Day. A photograph taken with both low setting sun and deep dark shadows is a challenge. A dozen or so shots were taken in order to comprise this one image; Nikkor 24mm-70mm zoom lens with focal length set to 24mm lens, aperture at f/13, 1/60 second shutter speed, ISO 100 with matrix metering.