Any family photos of the yard showing the meter where was?
Not back where it was. It was a 5 foot wide access to the new "way back," the backyard of the second house. There was a neighbor's low hanging fig tree that shaded it nicely and made it a great pretend cave or the inside of a rocket ship or submarine for us kids, but not much light for photos back there. The gas meter made a great part of the rocket engine or sub diving controls.
I had some great stuff I'd bought from the Rocklin Army-Navy Surplus yard, old control panels from planes, ships, etc. you could buy that stuff by the pound and it was great for a kid to make his own spaceship control room. Big knobs, switches, lights (I got some to even blink), great stuff. All the kids would come and we'd remake it in different ways, either in my grandmother's garage in the winter, or by that gas meter in summer, if it wasn't too hot, but that shade was always good and a breeze usually blew through there. Man, the things we could imagine you could see through those fig leaves. . . Kids today don't know what they're missing with their preprogrammed games.