The company's last signage for the west coast, oval Gulf within a rectangle. That dates the photo to the 1970's, as Gulf was gone by 1979. People from back East all know Gulf signs were circular orange things, at least until recent times when some stations had rectangles filled with light blue sky and puffy clouds with an orange Gulf circle in the midst of things.

The Shell station on the corner is gone - today a large parking lot for El Capitan. I stopped there once on my way to the Fernley house, and played a slot game (might have been Chili Chili Fire) - won a $300 jackpot on a Saturday morning! That slot mechanic must know his stuff!!!! The cashier stopped counting her cigarette packs (also part of her job it seems) and congratulated me. I said I was on my way to Fernley and she sort of smiled and said, "I'd take that money and leave, too, if I had it!"\

Happy memories of Hawthorne.