Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Phillips 66 couple
Greg Herron and fiancé Jules Webb stand at the new 1930s replica gas pumps in Steptoe which Herron installed in July.
On a hazy, smoke-tinged evening last Friday, a motorcycle pulled into Steptoe.
The rider parked at a gas station on the corner, two Phillips 66 pumps gleaming at the island, radio heard from the repair bay. The man ambled over to two people sitting out front. He asked if they had seen another rider, relayed some banter about the guy's phone not working and asked how cell coverage is in these parts.
“Do you have water, food?” he said.
“I can get you some water,” said the woman sitting by the shop door, after a moment.
“This is our house,” said the man next to her.
“Oh!” said the rider, taking a step back. “I'm sorry.”
The new Phillips 66 pumps are only 1930s replicas but are drawing attention in Steptoe just off Highway 195 at the former 1952 station, which was later used as a soil testing facility.
Greg Herron bought the building seven years ago from the family of the late Wayne Kinsinger and has stocked it with his “automobilia,” while living in half of the building with his fiancé, Jules Webb.
It looks like a business, but it is a hobby.
“This is what I do for passion, not money,” said Herron. “I buy a lot of cars that don't run. I consider it an adoption.”
The “old” signs and pumps out front point to what he wants to salute.
“I wanted to remember the era of cars with chrome bumpers vs. plastic, on models that look like every other car. You go down the road and can't tell a Mazda from a Toyota from a Ford Taurus.”
He has worked as a lot salesmen, ran repair shops, refurbished cars and sold them to new caretakers for almost 40 years. His latest purchase is a 1961 Studebaker Lark VI.
At the station, the thin, six-foot tall orange and white gas pumps – which only look like they work – come from a time when gas pumps required a customer, or more so, an attendant in full uniform and hat, to crank the handle to reset the numbers on the front. Once the nozzle was lifted, the sound of the pump would rumble on.
Upheaval
Herron's path to Steptoe started in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana in 2007, where he owned an auto shop in Stevensville.
Arriving in Steptoe on a tip from a friend, Herron bought the station and worked at NAPA in Colfax and Ace Hardware in Pullman.
He officially retired last year when he turned 62.
Still, buying, selling and driving to see cars, it adds up.
“By the time you get done, you're lucky if you get your expenses back,” Herron said. “It's not that I look to sell, it's that people say, 'Hey, can I buy that?'”
Plans for the corner place in Steptoe remain undefined.
“I'd offer free rent for someone to put in a coffee stand here,” he said. “If I was younger, I'd rock this corner. ... buy and sell on a large scale.”
The shop previously had shorter, 1950s-era pumps before Herron took them out last fall. Their replacements cost $1,000 each, sold in a kit by a replica company in North Carolina. With no cranks included, Herron added them.
For the first two years he owned the 1/3-acre station, he operated a flea market and removed 4,800 pounds of debris from the building, which he bought as-is.
Last fall a buyer put in an offer on the building and Herron accepted. The new owner intended to open a coffee shop and wanted the '50s gas pumps taken out. Herron agreed to sell them.
“It was very frustrating to me, because this is how it should look” he said. “Like a gas station.”
Later, the deal to sell the station fell through, leaving no pumps at all out front.
Renewal/revival
The new pumps have been in place for three weeks and the curious continue to stop.
Herron also put in two vintage lamps at each end of the island; solar-powered.
“It's been a real blessing,” he said of the new look of the corner. “And I don't use that word often. It's kind of like re-doing a car, when you get it running, get it painted, you get renewed excitement about working on it.”
Next to be installed is a black hose ringer, which Herron found upstairs in the shop.
The steel pumps may cause more of a stir because gas has not been available at Steptoe's Pleasant Valley Country Store (the former Friendly Mart) since early 2016 because of the lack of updated dispenser valves on the pumps and a credit-card chip reader.
The professional
With the one repair bay ready to use – Herron just bought a new lift for it in Post Falls last week – he may do repairs for people “at a convenience level.”
“It will probably morph into that,” said Herron, who was one of the judges for Rosalia's Battle Days car show in June.
The lift represents the change inside the building since Herron has owned it.
“I had to get rid of thousands of car items before I could get a lift into the shop,” he said.
He also answers car questions on Quora, the online question-and-answer forum, tapping experience from his lot sales background, too.
“Car salesmen were in high regard,” Herron said of his time working in Missoula, starting in 1978. “It was like going to a party to go to work everyday.”
His first professional sale was a used two-ton International truck that had been on the lot for six months. No other salesman wanted to serve the prospective customer who pulled in.
“I had on a corduroy sport jacket, polyester pants and a shirt that probably didn't match either,” Herron said.
He later wrote radio ads for used cars: “This 1969 Ford full-size wagon will hold five sheep in back, 13 if you cut them up right.”
And so it goes at the corner in Steptoe in 2017.
An older couple stopped the other day, and Herron and Webb were sitting outside with a glass of wine in hand.
“Aren't you a business?” said the man from the driver-side window.
No, just an attraction.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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