Partners in the oil and gas business

How many of you remember the names of those two radio characters from Pine Ridge, Ark.?

If you remember the golden age of radio of the 1930s and ‘40s, you will remember those two lovable business partners, Lum and Abner, and their famous Jot ‘Em Down store.

Each week the characters, Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody, partners in Pine Ridge’s General Store, would bring radio audiences some down-home humor as the partners serviced the needs of their fictional townspeople.

The 1920s were a time of growth for Huntington Beach as oil was pumped out of the ground, refined and pumped back into the many cars in town.

Today the word “service” in “service station” is more a remnant of a time when car owners drove into a gas station and had the attendant pump the gas, check the oil and water and put air in the tires, and it didn’t cost a cent extra for the service.

This week we are going to look at a couple of service station partnerships here in Huntington Beach and learn about the men behind those partnerships.

Our first partnership ran a gas station in the mid-1920s at 303 Main St.

Lynn M. Robb and William Gallienne operated the Macmillan station, and since I have written much about Gallienne in the past, we’ll concentrate more on Robb today.

Lynn M. Robb was born on Dec. 2, 1877, in Muscatine, Iowa, where he would spend the next 30 years.

In 1911, at the age of 34, Robb left the state and headed for California, the same year that my dad left Minnesota to live here in a much warmer climate.

For the next seven years, Robb traveled around California looking for the ideal location to settle down.

In 1918 he found that location right here in Huntington Beach, where he purchased a five-acre farm.

This farm was located on a hillside and was not much to look at, nor was he able to grow any prize-winning crops on his land.

But in a few years he wouldn’t need to, for his farm was located right in the middle of our rich oil-producing area.

Robb had three wells on his property that produced so money, he didn’t need to work the farm.

With this newfound wealth, Robb and his wife and daughter moved into town, buying a home at 419 Ninth St. He then teamed up with Gallienne to operate the service station at the corner of Main Street and Olive Avenue.