SUMNER — One day about 15 years ago, Tim Wallace announced to wife Sue that he was going to be moving a derelict Auburn gas station on to their bucolic country lawn.

And then he did.

“I said, ‘You’re nuts, you’re not bringing home a filling station,'” said Sue Wallace. “I thought he really lost his mind.”

He took it apart where it stood near The Barn on Minot Avenue — after kicking out the pigeons and squirrels — and carefully numbered each piece, reassembling it on his lawn.

He painted the 10-by-20-foot building and 10-foot canopy white and red, then weighed down its shelves with 1950s air filters, oil cans and hundreds of vintage finds. He hung signs and set up three restored Mobil gas pumps out front.

It’s now one-third of the Wallaces’ Past Gas & Ancient Oils Museum.

In the years since, Sue has fully come on board.

“She’ll go in an antiques store and I can’t keep up with her,” said Tim.

When Tim was a kid, his dad, Mac, ran an Esso station in Canton. Mac and his brother pumped gas and changed tires. Tim figures that’s probably where the automotive bug bit.

In 1999, Tim, a carpenter by trade, read about people restoring old gas stations. Then inspiration struck for the old gas station-turned car dealership-turned fruit stand-turned squirrel house in Auburn.

“I had my eye on that and I said, ‘Oh, man, there’s one for me right there,'” he said.

Turned out, it wasn’t so hard to move. One hundred years ago, when it was originally built, stations like it were meant to be mobile.

“If it was a bad corner, (if) they didn’t do enough business, they’d move it to another corner,” Tim said.

A few patches in the roof, a few new windows, and he was in business, circa 1950. There’s a yellowed 1958 Sun and Journal special “Motorcade Holidays” supplement on the counter, a rotary phone with its three-digit phone number (388) written on the center dial and a box of 1-cent root beer barrel candies.

In each of the three buildings that now occupy their lawn — the vintage Mobil station, an old-time general store and a two-story catch-all with Gulf Dealer signs in the window — the Wallaces don’t just write a love letter to everything vintage automotive. (Which they do. Thoroughly.) They also fill out the spirit of the era in the little details.

There are colorful, triangle banners that would have flapped in the breeze off a service station 60 years ago. Vintage matchbooks with voluptuous models. Rubber tire ashtrays, stacks of worn, folded gas station maps and “I remember that’s” around every corner.

“I like the hunt when I go find stuff,” said Tim. “When I first walk into a building that’s got a bunch of stuff in it, it’s like, ‘Wow, Christmas,’ and then some. I get a kick out of the people coming and seeing it. I like the people that reminisce, and I get a lot of reminiscing people.”

He figures they’ve collected more than 20,000 pieces of gas, oil and automotive memorabilia. The general store starts out as an olden-day country store with a mannequin named Fill (for fill-up) minding the counter and opens to a large room with 55 restored gas pumps that span from 1886 to 1976.

“I can tell you a story pretty much with every one of my pumps,” he said. Pointing to one red Texaco: “I actually pumped gas into my car in 1974 out of that gas pump.”

Back then, it was in front of the West Sumner Store and Post Office. After the store closed, somehow — he’s not sure of the details — “it ended up at my brother-in-law’s on a stump and I asked him if I could have it. ‘Yeah, take it, I’m getting tired of looking at it.'”

Tim said he’s found everything within a 100-mile radius. People assume he scours eBay, but the Wallaces’ computer isn’t connected to the Internet. It’s another old-school thing.

Instead, they hit flea markets and auctions. And wherever carpentry work takes him, Tim keeps his eyes open.

“I’ve been in every attic, cellar and basement in two-three towns around, always looking,” he said.

After a storm door job once, the customer asked, “‘What do I owe you?’ I said, ‘Those oil cans on that top shelf,'” Tim said.

The customer was surprised. They both walked away happy.

At another job fixing a roof in Canton, he had instructions to clean out the attic and take everything to the dump. He found two small, personal recognition plaques, one from Gulf Oil in 1921 and an undated one from Chevron. He asked the homeowner about them.

“Her first husband was a Gulf dealer, her second husband was a Chevron dealer,” Tim said. The plaques now hang on his walls. “That was also heading to the dump if Mr. Tim didn’t come along.”

Most of the pumps and assorted parts come to him in rough, rusty shape. With winters off from work, he uses that time to restore them to showroom quality with gleaming, smooth paint and stickers.

“He’ll spend hours sanding, sanding and sanding,” said Sue. “He can make something rusty look awful nice.”

The mother lode of his collecting career is mostly housed in the two-story catch-all. Ten years ago, Tim bought out the remnants of the defunct Knightly Oil Co. in South Paris. Knightly was a distributor, passing out inventory — including signs — to other gas stations.

“He’d get a bunch. The ones he didn’t need went in the attic,” Tim said. “I went over there and made an offer on everything, cleaned out the place.”

Among the scores was a giant 6-by-10-foot lit Texaco sign. Found leaning on the outside of a warehouse, one side was pristine, the other had a 20-foot tree growing through it.

He cut the tree and kept a bit for posterity. Other finds in the catch-all building include his father’s 400-plus key chain collection.

The Wallaces are still adding to the museum. It looks like there’s no room left. Tim insists there’s room.

“I’ve got a guy coming this afternoon, he’s got a bunch of stuff he’d like to give me,” he said. “I have no idea what he’s bringing. That’s half the fun.”

They decided this year to start opening to the public on Saturdays from the first week in May to the end of October. Admission is $7.

There are picnic tables in front of the Mobil station; visitors are welcome to pack and enjoy a lunch. The property sits deep in the countryside, at the bottom of Black Mountain. It also has a horse barn. And a water feature.

Tim’s skills, Sue said, aren’t limited to building houses and restoring gas pumps.

“I wanted a heart-shaped tub when we got married and, of course we couldn’t afford it, so he made me a heart-shaped pond,” she said.

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Go and do

Past Gas & Ancient Oils Museum

Where: 380 Black Mountain Road, Sumner

When: Open Saturdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from the first weekend in May to the last weekend in October.

Cost: Admission is $7

FMI: 388-2355

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