severngaspumps.com Blog

It’s been a week or two since the Hershey AACA show.  We saw a whole lot of people going through. Seems to have been considerably more that previous years? Sales were better than in the past. Met some new friends and visited with some old ones. One couple was from Israel. A little village outside Tellevieve. The gentleman was an engineer whos’ hobby was restoration on any old machinery. He has photos of his projects and they were impressive. He had restored two early Harley Davidsons, a 1941 US Army Jeep, a 1966 Jaguar and a Corvette. When he has time, he sculpts in metal making very interesting displays. It is so much fun meeting people like this. We have so much in common.

For those of you in the old car hobby, you know that next Wednesday thru Saturday we’ll all gather at Hershey, Pa.  It is the largest auto flea market in the world. There will be cars, car parts, old signs, gaspumps, car jacks, tools, paintings,etc,etc,etc. It is said that if you can’t find it here, it doesn’t exist! There are over 9000 vendors and usually a half million people who come to shop. We see folks from all over the globe. If you want to see a very interesting event…..please stop in. We are set up at C4M1, out front. That it the Chocolate Field North.

I’ll be out of the shop for about a week. If needed, contact me on my cell phone. Be back to work on Sept.23rd.

I remember where I was when John Kennedy was shot.  I remember where I was when the took away Bobby Kennedy.  I remember where I was when they ended the life of Martin Luther King. I’ll ALWAYS remember where I was on 9-11-2001. As the song says….”The day the world stopped turning” Thanks Allan. NEVER FORGET!

Today was the day that we set up in the Antique Center at Savage Mill Mall in Savage, Md.  We were vendors there, about 8 years ago, before we decided to get more heavily into shows throughout the country.  We will still be doing those events but thought why not give retail a try?  We were asked to set up in a central display area for the next two months.  After which, we will move into our own spaces.  Here are two pictures of the display.  If you can, stop by and have a look in person?

As many of you might know, we are a restoration shop. We are open by appointment for retail customers. Beginning on Saturday, Sept.3rd, 2011, we will have a featured display area at one of the areas biggest and classiest antique centers. We will be at The Antique Center at Historic Savage Mill, Savage, Md.    www.AntiqueCenterSavage.com  Beginning in October we will be a regular vendor in the center. If you are in the Baltimore/ Annapolis/ Washington D.C. area, you need to stop by. There is a lot of great stuff here.

In my business, I speak with a wide variety of people.  We discuss the economy, the government situation, our future and that of our children.   A lot of the folks are not from this country originally.  Many are from South America.  In speaking with them, they tell me that all have dreamt of coming to this country to live and work.  As Americans, we have the right to state our opinion…..it is a right.  Imagine living where it is not allowed nor tolerated.  These people are by and far hard workers.  Most are very honest and I’m proud to say that many are my friends.  They are proud of their work, their families and extreemly proud of The United States of America. They believe that if you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere!  These are my thoughts as well.  I am a veteran who believes wholeheartedly in this country.  I’m a proud American!

For those of you who think this isn’t hard work…..think again. My son and I spent five days, last week, in the woods pulling out gas pumps.  Now, when I say pulling  out, that’s exactly what I mean.  There were times that we had to cut down trees and fight off ground bees.  The temperature was 104 on one day with a humidity level of pure H2O.  After we cut things loose we took big wheeled hand trucks and manually dragged the units to an old logging road.  We staged them there until Friday when I had a good friend show up with his 53′ road tractor/trailer combination.  Loading, with the help of a farm tractor with a lifting system, took about 7 hours.  We drove through the night to get home where we proceeded to unload what you see.  As we removed them from the truck, they seemed to swell up……LOL….guess it was the air!  Trying to count this many is a challenge but three of us agree that there is a bit over two hundred in this bunch.  Still have twelve more to pick up this week.  My wife and neighbor are calling me Sandford and I think it fits!  Add these to what is in stock and we current have over four hundred units…. By the way…..we’ll sell any one gas pump….or all at once!  The more you buy……the better the price! Paul

I got a call from a young working man, a couple of month’s ago.  He said that he had an old gas pump that belonged to his Grandfather. He had taken the doors off in an attempt to start to restore the pump and became overwhelmed.  Lucky for us, he was searching the web and discovered our site.  He sent a few pictures and we decided to give it a try.  He lives in Pennsylvania so we agreed to pick it up for him.  It was in very bad shape.  Basically it was a basket case with parts missing and other parts unusable.  Dented and broken.  Things needed welding and fabrication.  We have had worse but because of his attachment, we took extra care to do a good job.  The attached picture shows the completed pump uopn delivery several weeks ago.  It was so nice to see the appreciation on Chris’ face and know that we were able to keep part of his Grandfather’s memory alive for years to come.

The fun part about this business is meeting interesting people and discovering things they have hidden away, awaiting restoration. This was the case about two months ago. We got a referral from one of our good customers. The lady who called mentioned that the family was in the oil business and that we had some of the same friends.  We met and I was pleasantly surprised by some very nice but very rough gas pumps. She wanted to have a pump for the office, so we took a 900 Series Gilbarco out of their collection to bring back to life. Years ago, the company was an Esso dealer. We opted to do that type of rework on the old pump. I think it turned out pretty good? Our customer seemed happy too!