Every time I drive down Higgins/Touhy Avenue in unincorporated Elk Grove Village (or it might be Des Plaines, when I think of it), my eyes are always drawn to an old, abandoned gas station just west of some railroad tracks.
One day back in the early 1980s I took my parents to the airport, and on the way home I stopped here to fill up the car. I paid $1.29 a gallon that day.
A week later I passed by the station and it was closed. The signs, lights, pumps, station house, and billboards were all in place, but the station never reopened. The Marlboro cartons were still stacked just inside the station’s windows. The sign with the gas prices still read $1.29 for Regular.
Over the next twenty-some years I drove by the place every so often and saw how it was both frozen in time and deteriorating simultaneously. The “1 29” eventually fell off the sign, the billboards, station, and a couple light posts collapsed, and the concrete became overgrown as the prairie reclaimed its space.
A few years ago, someone took over the property and stacked huge concrete blocks all over the property and surrounding area. You can see they left the sign and one of the lights intact. (The billboard with the law firm advertisement is a newer addition.) I’ve wondered if the station and everything else is still there behind the concrete and bushes.
I’m not sure why I’m drawn to this place. Maybe it has to do with the way it’s become a physical representation of the passage of time and the fact that things keep moving forward even after “business as usual” is done. That I was at the gas station right before it closed somehow connects me to it.
Now, if only that $1.29 gas was still around…