Roadside Relics - Exit 58 Truck & Auto Repair (Former Amoco) - Townsend, GA

Interstate highways are a funny thing.

Despite being arteries of modern transit, hauling untold billions in goods and untold millions of people every week, there's a weird mysticism to them. A slightly ethereal, odd quality. They cut through places new and old, and so when you take off the highway on an exit, well, there's just no telling what you'll find.

Sometimes it's a perfectly normal place, a small town of not too much note. An assortment of gas stations, some current, some modern. A nicer hotel, a cheaper motel. A place for breakfast, a place for lunch. Sometimes they're nice little cities, college towns, places that exist off the highway. You'll see a mix of new, shiny commercial buildings mixed with offices and the occasional house. Rarely, you get the places that hardly exist. They could phase out of reality at a hat drop, places you'd probably not notice if their name was erased off a map.

This is one of those places.

Let me welcome you to the town of Townsend, Georgia. Sitting off I-95 along GA-57, you can lodge at a Days Inn-turned-Motel-6 sporting a renovated vintage restaurant, an OYO squatting in a former Knights Inn whose parking lot is so crater-infested it's frightening, or, if you fancy a drive into town, the single-level timewarp of the Eulonia Motel.

Gas has plenty of options too- you have an Exxon, a Shell, a Marathon, "Solar", and if you like to take some chances, completely unbranded gasoline in front of the Motel 6. However, you no longer have the choice, of Amoco.

While Amoco has returned to some markets, as a brand of their new corporate overlord BP, this station is an original Amoco. Still flying the Amoco torch, this location was an absolute delight to find by complete accident.

I was only able to do a quick run around from this side, but it's clear nothing has changed. Here we can see the old "Food Shop" signage over the old c-store, along with the very faded striping next to it.

This photo gives us a better look at the equally intact canopy, still bearing the Amoco name, and this time with far less faded stripes.

That is, unfortunately, all I have from this wonderful little station. I can only hope this remains into the future, as it's perhaps the best preserved example of an original Amoco I've seen.

We'll be seeing more from this road trip, in the future- more weird and vintage gas stations, and some other abandoned delights.