Bringing gas station history alive at Below Book

Bob Casseday and Harry Sheing own and operate Below Book Auto Sales on Savannah Road in Lewes. In addition to their sales and service, they also take local history, and fun, seriously. Parking meters posted at a few places in their sales lot remind people they are now at the beach. The salvaged meters have been lovingly restored and freshly coated with a shiny and arresting red.

Above the outside of one of their service bays they have hung the front end of a Volkswagen beetle. Big white letters scrawled on its windshield proclaim 1/2 price. Those touches help keep their service and sales business fun for themselves and their customers.

On the more serious side, they also understand how important local history is, and it interests them from the standpoint of their own industry. “We’re all about Lewes and the people here,” said Sheing. “And of course the history is deep.”

A year or so ago, Casseday came across a collection of old gas station pumps stored in a building on the west side of Sussex County. The owner had been gathering the pumps through the years when filling stations started closing down and disappearing. “They’re not in the greatest of shape, but we picked up a couple of them and by the time we and our guys in the body shop got done with them, they look pretty good. My intention wasn’t to make them look brand new, but rather make them look like they had been kept in good shape as they aged through the years.”

The tall tanks ­- one of them made by the Guarantee Liquid Measure Company ­- feature large glass tanks at the top with gallon markings engraved for clear visibility to customers. A manually operated handle on the side of the unit allowed the filling station operator to pump gas from an underground tank up into the glass reservoir according to how many gallows - typically up to 10 -­ a customer wanted. Once the customer saw that there were, say, eight gallons of gas in the tank, ­the gas would be released and flow by gravity into the customer’s tank through a long, rubber hose.

After the pumps were restored, Casseday said he spoke with Mike DiPaolo at Lewes Historical Society to get more information. “The man who sold me the pumps told me they were from the Lewes area. With Mike’s help and help from Richard Marsch, who used to own a station at Wescoat’s Corner, and Ronny Ritter, I was able to pin them down. The one we have under our sign in the front of the lot ­- a Fry Visible ­- was from an Esso station at Five Points where the new lighthouse now stands. The other, next to our building, was from Ellwood Wescoat’s Gulf station. It’s gone now but once stood where the Walgreens is. That used to be the corner of Savannah Road and old Route 14 and is the reason why that intersection is still called Wescoat’s Corner.” Bronze plaques mounted beside each pump give details of their history. Casseday was able to track down photographs of the stations, which he and Sheing have hanging in their customer waiting room.

“You might as well have some fun,” said Casseday.

If there’s any question as to the antiquity of the filling station photos, the 16 cents per gallon sign in one of them offers a pretty strong clue.