Roadside Fans

The red Pegasus has been the logo of Mobil, and before that Mobilgas and SOCONY, going back to 1931. The company itself is even older, tracing its origins to the Vacuum Oil Company of Rochester, NY, founded in 1866. Like so many oil companies of the early petroleum era, Vacuum Oil found its way into […]

On November 10, 2018, Spencer Stewart broke the news to the diner community that big changes were in store for the Tastee Diner in Laurel, Maryland. This rare Comac diner, one of only two operating, would be gutted, covered with a new facade, and converted to a medical marijuana dispensary. The bad news spread throughout […]

UPDATE: On my most recent Florida car rental, from Hertz, the rental car did not have a transponder with the ON / OFF switch and instead used PlatePass to track tolls. When I tried to register the car with Toll By Plate as described below, I was told I could not. PlatePass caps your charge […]

This posting was updated January 1, 2013 to reflect information from a newspaper article in The Times Record. When I was a child, the road to Grandma’s house was New York Route 2, leading from our home in Troy over Grafton Mountain to the small town of Petersburg. Our family’s many trips there are the […]