For me, it was a ripple effect of one interest leading to another and another until it became what it is today. Every little boy loves cars, I was no different. Friends and I would stay up late at night staring at the ceiling talking about the cars we would own when we became of driving age and all the modifications that would follow. Interior, exterior, engine, you name it we had it planned out long before we would ever take the wheel. At 16, I bought my first car and started to unravel all those ideas I had planned for so many years with what little I could afford on a 16 year old’s salary. One of these modifications included taking off the front license plate as it obscured the look of the front end....or at least it did in my opinion. That license plate sat in my room for quite some time until eventually finding its way onto two nails on my wall.
With my second car, bought out of state not too long after, came a plate from MO that had a cool look to it and, shortly after, joined my first plate on the wall. I couldn’t just have two, so I started looking for more plates, new and old, to join the collection. I’d always been around antique stores, flea markets and the like since I could walk so the opportunities to add to the collection were plentiful. As the collection grew, it started to become more ecelectic. Emblems, hub caps, hood ornaments, plate toppers, jewels, and, still my favorite to this day, porcelain license plates.
I can’t really recall the first item(s) I bought that started the petroliana “addiction”, but it was a natural transition with what I had already began collecting. Common oil cans joined road maps, matchbooks, other smalls and, eventually, signs. My eyes were now opened to a whole new world of beautiful antiques that had everything to do with the life blood/force behind the history of the automotive industry. I had always been one to dive deep into history books, combine that with cars and, needless to say, I was hooked. I soon had as much history of my favorite companies written down as I had items on my shelves, and I loved every second of it.
The final addition to this new found love was a memory sparked by the collection of a fellow collector. A grandmother of mine was a world traveler in her day and had saved different coins and bills to give to me as a child. I was always fascinated by the many different languages these people from around the world had spoke, their words appearing like script from another world. I would sit and wonder how another human being could speak, think, and dream in another language, completely different from our own, and how that, in turn, had resulted in a culture completely unique from the one we know. Upon seeing photos of this collection, composed of some of the most unique and unusual oil cans from around the world, the memories from my childhood came flooding back and a new layer to my love for petroliana had sprouted.
I really appreciate the idea behind this thread, it’s really enjoyable to hear the stories behind everyone’s beginnings. I’ve never given this much thought to what began this journey for me, let alone wrote it down, and I must say it was a nice trip down memory lane. This is the kinda stuff that keeps me coming back, thank you OG 👍
Last edited by RedHat; Wed Mar 06 2019 06:44 AM. Reason: Grammar
