If you’re wondering what happened to Day 11 and 12 (last post was Day 10), let’s just say there was a little rain. A lot of rain and grumpy sitting around. These two days were not much better — mostly cloudy and gray. So, I lumped them together for this post to give you some colorful moments.

I shot a couple of Dowdle Gas signs — you’ll how dreary my situation was. Anyway, among my passions is signs with depictions of flames. The article that I wrote about them for the SCA Journal (Society for Commercial Archeology) is at the printers but I also have a page here with lots of other signs:
https://www.roadarch.com/sca/flames.html

This one is in York, AL:

This one in Meridian, MS is shorter but wider and I’m guessing that it’s older:

These two appliance privilege signs are on a vacant hardware store building in Eutaw, AL:

From Tuscaloosa, AL where I waited around half a day for the sun before giving up:

These two are on the facade of Charlie Joseph’s restaurant in LaGrange, GA. I love the detail and steam coming off of the meat on each of these. These single-sided plastic signs were mass-produced but I have only seen a couple of others still on display:

Let’s talk about what happened to this Greyhound Bus station in Tuscaloosa, AL. Here’s this snippet from Google Street View from 2013 when the building was already vacant and apparently that pink chalk or tape on the right was an indication of what was to come:

Shortly after that, it became a Dunkin’ Donuts – my photo from this summer’s trip:

Here are a couple of other signs in Tuscaloosa:

This top hat is at the Burch & Hatfield Tuxedo shop:

On the very outskirts of Tuskegee, AL – the long-abandoned, former Torch Cafe which shared the Standard Oil gas station building in the background:

In Brewton, AL:

This giant Pepsi can recycling machine is in Atmore, AL:

This Piggly Wiggly supermarket statue was installed in 2019 at the Milton, FL store:

And last one for this post, the tile mosaic at the entrance to the former Greyhound station in Pensacola, FL:

I’ll be back with more in a week or so.

Happy trails,
dj & the dogs