Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 27, 1991                   TAG: 9102270475
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: STEWARTSVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

STEWARTSVILLE HOLDING OUT AGAINST GETTY

This is not meant to be disparaging, by any means. Getty's gasoline is competitively priced. A gallon of milk (2 percent milk fat) at Getty is about 20 cents cheaper than what the pillaging gougers at the major grocery chains charge.

But think about what life was like when a Hop-In was a Hop-In and a Getty was a Getty and never the twain had met.

We had a whole Hunter Viaduct. We had an antiques mall in an old A&P building. We thought the state budget shortfall was $900 million. Iraq was a rare country without a "u" after the "q." And joining the reserves was a legitimate way to get away from the family a few weekends a year and get a good mortgage rate.

Then Hop-In evaporated.

Gone, gone, $2 billion plus, still "u-less" but we know where it is now. And being a reservist is a good way to see live combat.

Wherefore art thou, Hop-In?

Last week, the last Hop-In rabbits in Tidewater were replaced by Getty signs. This Virginiawide transformation is just about complete, which could mean a bridge collapse, stock market collapse or - at the very least - a minor train derailment or a few earthquake tremors.

Those who subscribe to the theory that life was somehow kinder, gentler and generally more palatable when Hop-Ins were around could find hope, though, east of Vinton at a shrine that conjures the simpler days.

There lives yet a Hop-In.

Known as the Store on the Mount, a lone Hop-In store survives on the crest of a hill near the heart of Stewartsville in the Bedford County West Bank.

"We have," says William Chase, "one store that remained a Hop-In due to the lease. It must remain a Hop-In."

Chase, the chief operating officer for Getty, said Silcorp Ltd., the Canadian company that sold Hop-In to Getty, still owns the store along Virginia 24.

It is the last known Hop-In in Virginia.

Getty manages the store under contract, and in fact the coffee cups and lots of the merchandise inside bear the Getty logo, even if the nuked Hop-In rabbits still glow outside the store.

Convenience stores have not, historically, spurred us toward spiritual rejuvenation, though when you need a quart of 10W-30 motor oil at 2 a.m. they sure do come in handy.

Perhaps, though, that's a result of our own short-sighted slavery to convention. This shop in Stewartsville has the potential to be a Mecca of sorts - a gathering spot for melancholy people to eat frankfurters, flip through magazines and daydream about life when life was good.

Who would have imagined just a few years ago, when we needed colorized movies to remind us of life when life was good, that a convenience store would someday fill that same void? Or that the evil days from which we fled would someday be considered the good times?

Four or five or eight years from now, the Stewartsville Hop-In will be switched to a Getty Mart. The shrine will be gone.

For now, though, we can respond to our primordial yearnings to turn back time.

We can buy motor oil after midnight.