THORNBURG — The old gas pumps discarded by the North Little Rock company that John Foster of Thornburg worked for in the 1970s gave him an idea.
They were called “mailbox” gas pumps, and that’s exactly what John Foster turned one into.
Foster, who works for American Petroleum in North Little Rock, said he started in 1970 with another gas company in the same building.
An “old gentleman” who worked at the first company started telling Foster the name of the pumps stored in the parking lot behind the shop, Foster said.
“The man pointed to several and said, ‘Well, they call them mailboxes,’” Foster said. “There were nine of them, junk … just sitting there being cannibalized for parts. I said, ‘A mailbox?’ It just hit me. … It looked like a mailbox.”
At the time, Foster said, he and his wife, Jean, received their mail on Arkansas 9.
The U.S. Postal Service changed the route “and said we could move our mailbox,” John Foster said. “I brought one of those pumps home. I took the computer out and put the mailbox in,” he said. He secured the pump in a concrete base.
He also put a light inside the pump-turned-mailbox.
“I connected it to the house light. You turn the front-porch light on, and [the mailbox] lights up,” he said. “It’s just one of those things; it’s just something different.”
Foster said “another unusual thing” about his pump is that the company Tokheim was known for that style of gas pump, but the company Gilbarco — then Gilbert and Barker in Springfield, Missouri — contracted with Tokheim in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to make these particular pumps for Exxon.
“There were a bunch of Tokheims around like them. This had a Gilbarco meter in it,” Foster said.
He said Tokheim is out of business, but Gilbarco (now Gilbarco Veeder-Root) is in North Carolina.
He said the gas-pump mailbox has been at the couple’s home since the late 1970s and has never had any damage done to it, which made him slightly nervous about any publicity on the mailbox. It has served him well all these years.
Foster, who served four years as crew chief of B-58 Hustlers at the Little Rock Air Force Base, said he is “semiretired.” He works three days a week servicing gas pumps at convenience stores.
Jean Foster said she’s never seen another mailbox like theirs.
“You’d be surprised how many people stop and take pictures,” she said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.