“When Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Russell Lee drove through the small town of San Marcos, Texas on a sunny afternoon in March 1940, a boldly decorated service station caught his eye.”
“Dozens of used tires, neatly arranged in four rows, spread across the top half of the two-story façade and wrapped around both sides, forming a grid of black circles against the building’s white clapboards. New tires ready for purchase—some still wrapped in the manufacturer’s white paper—leaned against each other on the ground, bookended by two Sinclair glass cylinder gas pumps. Another row of paper-wrapped tires hung above, accentuating the symmetry.
In front of one gas pump, an attendant, a young Black man dressed in overalls, stood curbside, ready for his next customer. The station advertised its Firestone merchandise with three colossal signs along the front and smaller placards in the window promising “long mileage” and “non-skid safety,” but the commercially produced advertisements were dwarfed by the proprietor’s creative and resourceful handmade display.
This service station had nothing to do with Lee’s official assignment that day—to document the wool and mohair scouring plant on the outskirts of town. Yet Lee, a white photographer working for an obscure agricultural agency, took out his medium format camera and captured the scene. “Secondhand Tires Displayed for Sale” is just one of 23,000 images he shot between 1936 and 1942 for the now legendary documentary project, which eventually included the Office of War Information (OWI).”
From ~ A Small Texas Town on a March Afternoon in 1940 by Kristi Finefield
Title: Secondhand tires displayed for sale. San Marcos, Texas
Photographer: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986
Created / Published: 1940 Mar.
Library of Congress: LC-USF34-035601-D and LC-USF34-035603-D