The street record, and the culture close: garages, gasoline, and the car as the evening's room

ITEMS 11–12 · MIXED — THE STREET AT DIRECTORY STRENGTH, THE CULTURE AT ITS TRUE SIZE

The leg ends where the car actually lived — on the street, and in the evening — and both records print at the sizes the sources keep. The street: the first garages and agencies stand at directory strength in Businesses — Apple's autos and garage and Howe's garage in the 1916 canvass, addresses unprinted by the directory itself. The jitney chapter of the cities' street wars has no Walkerton member: no jitney service, fare fight, or jitney ordinance is recorded for this ground, the jitney being an urban instrument a walking-size town had no use for. Gasoline retail's arrival — the first pump, the first curb or drive-in station on the town's streets — stands undated in any record reached, its settler the Independent's 1910s–20s file, named in the run note; the law of the street and the highway's coming stand whole in Transportation (US 6, SR 23, SR 104), and the motor-club test returns no Walkerton chapter or agent of record in the AAA-class record as reached — the town's motorists joined in the cities. The culture close: the drive-in screen never stood in Walkerton (the drive-in test, run whole in this run's kids-and-family addendum: the county's screens were the cities'); the cruise, the car as the evening's room, lived here on Roosevelt Road and the Michigan Street spine at a size no record itemizes — no cruise route, drive-in restaurant car culture, or A&W-class institution is documented for this ground at a strength this section can print, and the town's evening car culture prints instead in its documented furniture: the theatre of the Film addendum, the corridor of Food & Drink's present table, and a highway that carried the town's young people to the cities' rooms and brought them home. The close is this section's own shape: a town that sold cars for a century, serviced them for longer, and built none — its automobile history complete at the size of the counter, the garage, and the road.

Principal sources: Businesses (the 1916 garages; the modern row); Transportation (the highways); this run's kids-and-family addendum (the drive-in test); the Independent's 1910s–20s file named as the gasoline settler.