"Uncle Sam's Convenient Stores/Get'n'Go" - South Texas

   If you've ever lived around northern Laredo, Brownsville, or the cities of Kingsville, Carrizo Springs, Crystal City, or even Corpus Christi, Raymondville, Bishop or Harlingen during the 80's, 90's or 2000's, then a name like Uncle Sam's might ring a bell. Although Uncle Sam might've been a patriotic figure used all around the US, he was also the name of a convenience store chain ran by Big Valley Distributors of Camp Wood, Texas.

    Hey there, welcome to the first entry on the Retail Spotting blog! I wanted to specifically start off by saying this: if you live or used to live in the state of Texas and want to find out where your childhood corner stores/food marts used to be located, click on the "Texas Gas Stations Map" link on the very right or just by clicking here. I'm working on putting every single gas station that was apart of a chain on the map, whether it was a big or small chain. Of course, not everything about the map is perfect, so be sure to let me know about any things that may seem off or wrong (yes, if you see a location that's marked at the wrong spot but has the correct address, I'll get to fixing that, that's Google's fault.) More on that if you view the blog post there.

Who ran these stores?

    Originally, most (if not all) of these locations were owned by a company named J & E Oil based out of Elsa, Texas. They went by their trade name until switching to the brand name "Get'n'Go" somewhere in the early-to-late 90's. J & E didn't just run these stores, but they also distributed oil for many different gas stations around the area, if that wasn't obvious by their name. I believe these stores transferred over to a different company named "Big Valley Distributors" around 1995, as listed in the Sales Taxpayer Search of the state of Texas. I believe that J & E Oil sold over the distributing rights for the actual stores to Big Valley in 1995, while J & E provided the gasoline. I am unsure of this, but it definitely seems like this, as both of these companies seem to be related in one away or another based on online sources I found. These stores mainly provided Fina, Texaco or Chevron gasoline, and were located all around South Texas, mainly in the cities of Carrizo Springs, Laredo and Brownsville.

The Fina stripes outlined were common for stores with the brand.
(Carrizo Springs, 2013)

    Of course, Uncle Sam's was just a brand name, as most of their stores were operated by actual people, just under J & E and Big Valley Distributors when paying sales tax. Honestly, I wasn't able to find much about the stores online as most of them had already closed by 2003/04. The only sources I could find actually verifying these existed were through old Vintage Aerial photos (which is how I originally found out about them), FaceBook posts and very few locations that kept the branding or scars of what it had been. 

Uncle Sam's location in Harlingen mentioned below during its abandonment (2007)

Before the location opened, it was reportedly Longhorn/Figueroa record/convenience store 
(as per Harlingen Texas Expo's FB post)

    The information I found above was really the only info I could find physically mentioning one of the previous locations of Uncle Sam's. There's also this picture I stumbled across while looking for pictures of small-town Riviera, Texas while trying to find out what this specific former Chevron location was. If you can tell, this gas station had 2 brands labeled at once: Get'n'Go and Uncle Sam's. Both of these brands were under J & E Oil Company, and I believe that during this time they were rebranding most of these stores from Get'n'Go to Uncle Sam's. This store later had Uncle Sam's branding on the front entrance of the store as evident from the label scars shown on the Google Maps street view image.

At that time the store was a co-branded gas station, having the Get'n'Go branding
as well as the Uncle Sam's on the Chevron signage. 
(as per Vintage Aerial, 1998)

When did these stores cease to exist? 

   Most of these stores seem to have closed around the early-to-mid 2000's, around 2003-2004 as per the Sales Taxpayer Search, but I wasn't able to find much info as to why. I'm not sure if just the owners of the brand, whether it be J & E or Big Valley Distributors went bankrupt, or simply just shuttered the brand, or what had happened, but if anyone has any info it'd be much appreciated.

    If you'd like to see where your local Get'n'Go, J & E or Uncle Sam's was located at one point, check the Texas Gas Stations Map listed on the right. Thanks for reading!

    

Welcome to the blog!

As you can see the website itself may be a bit messy, so my bad about that. It was already sort of confusing enough to get the custom domain, but Blogger is a bit more confusing to work around, especially with how it looks on mobile. But this'll have to do for now.

To start off this blog, I wanted to answer some questions about the whole entire thing. You can let me know more questions below in the replies if you'd like, and I'll do my best to answer them. 

What even is this blog about?

Most of the stuff on this blog will be about South Texas retail, specifically around the Corpus Christi-Houston areas and in between, or just about Texan retail in general. Whether it's former stores in plazas, chain restaurants, or gas stations/food marts (trust me there'll be a lot of those), I'll have all of my findings or anything that I find interesting in general documented here.

Why is this blog named "Retail Spotting?" And why did you start it in the first place?

Retail Spotting isn't really a term for anything, but I coined it mainly because sometimes I've seen buildings that have a specific facade that look exactly like old stores (ex. Stripes stores damaged by Hurricane Harvey have shown old remnants of Circle K's branding behind its cover). 

Circle K in Gregory, TX (Jun 2018)

Circle K in Hernando, MS (Dec 2015) (Retail Retell/flickr)

It's sort of a weird topic, but it's something I've always had interest in, and ever since I started working on a map to identify where most Texas gas station stores have been over the years, I've wanted to start a blog showing what I've found along with showing anything that might sound cool or rare.

Most of my inspiration for starting a blog like this come from the people behind the blogs Roadside Architecture, Houston Historic Retail, and the forum/blog Groceteria, along with a variety of others. There isn't much in general about retail around Texas especially with places in the South like Corpus Christi, so I'd like to spend some of my free time updating the site with some of my findings and maybe even help fill in the gap?

Those are about most of the questions I can think of. Don't expect the site to be updated every day or so. I'm just blogging for fun, but still I'll try my best to post maybe once or twice every week! 

I also assume some people came from my old TikTok, which I used to link this blog on, which is totally fine! All things considered, if you find this or anything else interesting, consider bookmarking this website or coming back to it whenever if you find it interesting or enjoyable!