This long-running deli/sandwich shop along NJ Highway 31 outside of Flemington recently closed. Here it is:

You may or may not notice anything at all curious about this image. Hint: look at the sign.

We’re focusing on the sign today, not on the building, which is unremarkable, although it looks like it may have been a house before it became a restaurant. The sign is not a common size or shape for a deli or restaurant, is it? What sort of sign does it look like?

Well, I drove past this site a few days ago, and the deli sign had been taken down. This is what was underneath:

Yep—this is a classic Texaco sign, from some time in the 1940s. The gas station structure itself is long gone, and it was probably an older design than the postwar porcelain-coated boxes that you still occasionally see along roadsides.

The sign has been preserved fairly well exactly because it was painted over. There’s a third one in between, for a sandwich shop called Big Ed’s, before the most recent occupant.

I’m not aware of any plan to save or sell the sign, although I hope it ends up in the hands of a collector. These are worth some money. It’s really cool that there’s this record of 80 years of American roadside history, literally consisting of layers, just sitting there. It’s a fossil record, a highway archaeological dig.

The informal reuse of brand-centric structures and signs is often seen as kind of tacky. But as I’ve noted in this series many times, it’s entrepreneurial and thrifty, and it also serves as a record of our country’s social, cultural, and economic history.

How many more of these are sitting there in plain sight, their unknown and forgotten layers waiting to be discovered?

For something similarly cool, take a look at this post from the archives.

Related Reading:

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #3

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #9

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