I drove by this (former) gas station yesterday.
It’s near the Syracuse University athletic department’s practice field facility.
It’s a station that, as long as I’ve lived here (I lived within three miles of that station since I was in sixth grade, more than 40 years ago, until I left home in the late ‘70’s) didn’t do very much business. I never filled my car there once. I think it’s because the owner didn’t try very hard; his gas was always more expensive than seemed reasonable, and he had no convenience store and his garage always looked disheveled and uninviting. I rarely, if ever, saw a car parked there.
My recollection is that it went out of business sometime after I left home, probably during the ‘80’s.
The station was vacant and unused for years after I returned, in December 1988 (just after the Lockerbie tragedy, which killed more than 20 Syracuse undergraduates, along with hundreds of other innocents).
Now it’s covered with this enormous quilt. It gets rained on. You can’t see a single bit of the building underneath. The sections of the quilt bear odd patterns and incoherent fragmentary worded messages.
It usually seems to have one or two gawkers hanging around, sometimes with cameras.
Thanks for the personal account.
43 deg. 01' 21.61" N
76 deg. 06' 39.01" W