A Look Back:

This week, let’s take a look back at these two service station operators who pumped gas when it was less than 20 cents a gallon as the attendant checked your water, oil and tires, and even gave you a free map.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Fifth and Main streets, and Pecan Avenue came together to form a triangle near where Jan’s Health Bar is today.

This lot at 426 Fifth St. was once the site of several thriving service stations that reached back to the start of our oil-boom days of 1920.

In 1922 a partnership was formed between Gus Hushman and Andy Teague, whose domain was the area throughout the Roaring ‘20s. Known officially as the Huntington Beach Service Station, for many of the residents it was just Gus and Andy’s filling station.

Each day they would dispense their Blue Streak gasoline into the Model Ts of our oil workers and, when need be, repair their cars. In one of their slogans they said to notice the service at work: “Andy gives her the free air while Gus sells ‘em the oil.”

By October 1923, Gus was able to buy another station in Torrance. He moved his family up there and operated that station while Andy ran the one in Huntington Beach.

Gus was born and raised in Loveland, Colo. He attended its local schools and after graduation became interested in the beet sugar industry around Loveland. He got a job at one of the processing plants and worked his way up to become superintendent at the Great Western Sugar Company’s Loveland plant.

In 1920, Gus packed up and moved to California where he became interested in the automobile servicing business. In 1921, he took a chance and purchased the filling station on the triangular lot located at Fifth and Main streets.

A year later, Andy purchased a half-interest in this gasoline gold mine and the partnership was off to a good start.

A fine musician at heart, Gus could play several instruments and soon became director of the Huntington Beach Municipal Band. Through hard work and discipline, he was able to transform the band into the finest in the state.

When state band championships were held in Escondido in the early 1920s, Gus entered our band. When the horns stopped blowing and the drums stopped beating, our band had won best band in the state of California and Gus was handed a check for $500.

Both Gus and Andy were big boosters of our city and they both were members of the Huntington Beach Masonic Lodge and the Odd Fellows.

Andrew Jackson Teague was born in 1883 in the town of Success, Mo., in Texas County to W.H. Teague and his wife.

Andy had four brothers — James, Gilbert, Herbert and Roy — along with two sisters, Ala and Jonnie.

Andy became a successful teacher for years in his hometown, before deciding in 1913 to live in California.

He arrived in Santa Ana and went to work in the sales department of the Union Oil Company. That job brought him to Huntington Beach when the company made him an agent for the area in 1917. It was in that capacity that he became acquainted with his future partner.

Andy moved, along with his wife Essie and two children, Nema and Jack, into a home at 513 Delaware Ave. He continued for one more year with Union Oil before putting full time in at the Huntington Beach station.

But by 1936, Andy had moved his family out of Huntington Beach and back into Santa Ana to live at 517 Wisteria Place.

After World War II ended in 1945, Andy’s life began to fall apart as his finances dwindled and he became more and more dejected.

On Oct. 10, 1947, he drove his car toward Huntington Beach and parked it near Wright Road (Brookhurst) and Hamilton Avenue by the Santa Ana River.

He got out of his car carrying a 12-gauge shotgun and walked over to a clump of nearby bamboo, where he shot himself.

JERRY PERSON is the city’s historian and a longtime Huntington Beach resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box 7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.