Billy Craig Service Center
A service station corner since the 40’s, by 1981 when Lynch Harper shot the top photo, an expanded Billy Craig’s Fina had opened service bays in a building previously used as a warehouse.
A family business now in its second generation, Billy Craig Service Center’s new facility was completed in 1985 or 86.
The corner gas station story at 214 West 1st tracks back at least to 1946 when what had been Walter Jackson’s Service station in February became Miller & McMillen’s in May before Aubrey Barrett bought the place in August. Father and Son B.D. and Rex Mars bought it in 1951.
Dewey Smith and Simp Simpson bought the station and expanded operations in 1952, renting utility trailers and pumping American Liberty gas. In 1960 Fox & Orill Amlico gave double Gold Bond Trading Stamps on Mondays and Wednesdays.
It was a Fina station when the Craig family arrived in 1963, the same year Dallas-based American Petrafina pulled its memorable “Pink Air” publicity ploy as competing refiners plugged multiples of “additives” promising to make their brand burn more efficiently.
“Our gas has lots of additives,” promised an ad sponsored by half a dozen local Fina dealers, “so many we couldn’t think of any good names for them. So we looked around for something else to add things to. Lo and behold, the only thing connected with your car that wasn’t already chock full of secret ingredients was your tire air. And there wasn’t much we could figure to do with tire air except make it some pretty color.”
Now you know.
