Gas Station History

Before I start this story, I just have to say… these things always happen to MysteryMan. When we first started dating forever ago (okay, okay, two years ago, but it feels like forever and plus he’s been flirting with me since sometime back in 2004) he told me that he’s like a magnet for extremely unlikely concidences, and I probably rolled my eyes at him.

Because, you know, when you think that something coincidental is going to happen to you then you’re more likely to recognize said coincidences and blah, blah, blah. Then I hung out with him for two years and holy hell, does the weirdest shit happen to this guy. Like, daily.

So anyway, our story beings back in June when I was trying to get MysteryMan the perfect birthday present. I settled on home brewing equipment so he could make his own beer and spent hours on the internet agonizing over the right types of fermenters and bottling buckets and siphons and hops.  And lo and behold, come July, not only did MysterMan have the best equipment the internet could offer (and oh how I searched for a brewing supply store within 100 miles that employed an actual person I could talk to) but we also successfully had beer!

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When it came time to bottle the beer two weeks ago, we realized there was a serious gap in my brewing knowlege, since I’d bought him all of the equipment to brew beer, but no bottles to store it in. So sue me.

When I was in Dallas for work, MysteryMan happened upon the jewel of all jewels. A store that sells home brewing equipment right here in our humble little city. Apparently the brewing thing is just a side business, because Titgemeiers main staple of business is actually selling feed (yes, like for cows and chickens you city folk) which explains why it never came up on any of my google searches.

Neither MysteryMan nor myself had ever heard of Titgemeiers before in our lives, but we sure were happy we found the place, and everyone lived happily ever after in the land of home brewed beer.

By some odd twist of fate, today as MysteryMan continuted digging a trench at the Memorial House (steering clear of any gas lines, I might add) a woman stopped by who — in the manner of small towns– was the sister-in-law of so-and-so’s cousin’s granchild’s whatever, and just so happened to have copies of some pictures of the original gas station that was on the Memorial property.

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You can see this was before the garage and traditional roofing was added on:

Garage Before

And you may notice the name on the original gas station.

Titgemeiers.

The wonderful woman who gave us these pictures also labeled the people in them to the best of her ability. The snazzily dressed guy on the left is Fred Titgemeier…

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The same Fred Titgemeier who opened a feed store in South Toledo in 1888. Which Philip would walk into 120 years later to buy beer bottles for our home brewed beer.

(You can read all about the Titgemeiers feed store history here.)

Even though this picture doesn’t show the little boys with scraped knees drinking Coca~Cola on the stoop the way I like to picture them, it’s pretty damn cool to know a little bit more about the story of building on the Memorial property.

4 Responses

  1. That just blew my mind a little.

    People in small towns retain a pretty detailed history of place. It drives my other half crazy that my mother and I give directions in relation to “the house that so-and-so lived in about 30 years ago, before he moved into that one on the corner of such and such, but after he was living in the barn; you know, the one that USED TO have green shutters.”Or something. Mom and I both grew up in this small town. As you can guess, the boy did not.

  2. as husband likes to say, as one married to a gal who is a magnet for the odd: life will never be boring with you!

    lucky you…and nice pics.

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