Mobil pegasus sign taken out of mothballs in Carthage

A Mobil pegasus neon sign that had been in storage for more than 30 years has been removed from the mothballs, donated and reinstalled at a renovated Skelly Filling Station in Carthage, Missouri, reported the Carthage Press.

Jerry Perry, president and CEO of Grace Energy Corporation, gave a Mobil pegasus sign to Mark Jenny and local artist Larry Glaze to display at the renovated station. This same sign, which is four foot tall, six feet wide, weighing 6,000 pounds, marked the original Grace Mobil Station on Central Avenue in 1953. […]

The sign hung at the station on Central (across from today’s Hometown Bank) until about 1965. Perry bought the gas company in 1980, and had kept the sign in storage many years. […]

Glaze, who once worked at the Skelly station with Luther Gowin when gas was 23 cents a gallon, said the sign was cleaned easily. The neon tubes and motor for the once-rotating sign have been removed, but there are plans to install lights at the base of the pole to illuminate the historic icon.

The renovated station is at 1101 S. Grand Ave. (map here). The former Mobil station was in the 300 block of West Central Avenue, which is Route 66 in Carthage. An image of the original Mobil station is here.

According to the newspaper, the Skelly Filling Station now is a hot rod shop and meeting place owned by Mark Jenny. It was a cleaning business.

(Image of a Mobil pegasus at the Hackberry General Store in Arizona by mlhradio via Flickr)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.