Automotive Artifacts

I’m going to need everyone to conform to my morals when it comes to automotive artifacts, ok? This rant is a followup to my last column in which I described a road trip I recently executed upon old Route 66. Dozens of glorious ruins of America’s roadside history were spotted, but one of them hit me extra hard. It was just an old sign. In Carthage, Missouri, lies a shambled building with the hand-painted name G&E Tire Co. ghosted through the bricks, and at the building’s corner at Oak Street and McGregor Boulevard there’s a fascinating protuberance: a simple brown, metal fabrication with remnants of neon tubes and lettering that says De Soto Plymouth.

- David Freiburger

My online research reveals that the business began, probably as a service station, as Joy's Garage in 1935. Joy Ortloffexpanded his profits and the building’s footprint, and soon he had a dealership for DeSoto (sometimes written as De Soto) and Plymouth cars—hence the sign on the building. The dream crumbled and the business closed in 1959, just a year before Chrysler Motor Company shuttered the DeSoto brand.

Another business popped into the building by 1962, G&E Tires, which also thrived and expanded—but, amazingly, the De Soto Plymouth sign was never removed even after the business again changed ownership in the mid-’70s. This is curious to me, as automobilia and reverence for ’50s stuff wasn't much of a thing in the disco days (though I believe ’50s nostalgia interest was sparked by the