Sing Oil Blog

Enterprise

Sing Food Store | Deli

1300 Rucker Boulevard

Enterprise, AL 36330

Click Here for today's MTC post on former Albertsons #4339 / former Bruno's #81

Welcome back to The Sing Oil Blog! For this week's post, we are going to take a look at a former Sing that I only discovered after performing deeper background research into the company. The reason is, this was one of a handful of stores divested in the late-1980's prior to the sale to Amoco, meaning it was not present in my list of acquisitions; it was only from my conversation with former Sing Vice President Tom Perry that I knew to even look for it.

The other interesting thing about this store is, similar to Troy and Moultrie, it has held onto some Sing traits longer than it should have. I'm still kicking myself that I couldn't have seen this store before its 2017 exterior remodel, but alas, I was a clueless lad at the time. We'll get some more details on what has changed later on.

Enterprise, Alabama, is the town known for its boll weevil statues (yes, a statue dedicated to a bug) and how it praised the storied pest for devastating local cotton crops in the early Twentieth Century.

Courtesy WGHN

Why would a city champion an insect which ruined its livelihood?

Well, some ingenious local farmers determined that rather than losing an entire harvest of cotton to a bug, they should attempt to farm other crops which were not vulnerable. The novel idea of introducing crop diversity and practicing crop rotation in the South was beginning to take hold around this time, following the work of others, such as George Washington Carver. Soon, Southern farmers found that more money could be earned from farming peanuts and this initial disaster soon led to a boom for the local economy. Hence why the boll weevil was celebrated.

In addition to the boll weevil, Enterprise is also remembered for a devastating EF-4 tornado which hit the town in 2007 and killed eight high school students. That was part of the same storm system which gave us the Harveys Transformational store in Americus (now slated to convert to an Aldi later this year) and caused Rite Aid to rebuild a former Eckerd in Columbus just north of Fran-Dixie. I don't often find myself mentioning tornadoes here, and for that particular outbreak to be mentioned on this blog three times now means it was a bad one.

Courtesy archives.gov - March 3, 2007

That outbreak is claimed to have caused $580 million in damage, with Enterprise being the hardest hit area bringing in a total of $307 million in damage. In all, 57 tornadoes were confirmed, and 20 lives were lost. The devastation was so severe that President Bush toured the area over the following days.

Courtesy Charles Burgess, Jr (Flickr) - Former Winn-Dixie #476 - July 29, 2011

Last, but not least, I'd be remiss if I neglected to mention the town's old Winn-Dixie which Sing Oil Army member Charles Burgess photographed in 2011. He described the store like this, "The [interior] of the store is straight out of the early 80s. There are no upright cases except for the juice and dairy cases. Green shelves, wood paneling, and brown paint help take you back in time!" At least the store recently received a new white paint job on the exterior!

Courtesy Devin Thomas (Google Maps) - Former Winn-Dixie #476 - November 2015

Unfortunately, Charles did not take any pictures of the store while it was open and the only one I can find is of the old coffin coolers with the deli / bakery off in the distance. If only the Meatball Man (I find his pictures of frozen meatballs on nearly every old Winn-Dixie listing) could have turned his phone up just a little bit more!

Courtesy Ryan Brotherston (Flickr) - Former Winn-Dixie #476 - March 16, 2016

As a consolation, friend of the blog Ryan Brotherston at least managed to photograph the empty building back in 2016 to give us some idea of what it looked like. That store opened in 1984 and maintained some form of Winn-Dixie's 1980's interior up until it closed. Based on this Dothan Eagle photo, though, it looks like most of the original 1980's signage was removed at some point during a "remodel".

Probably one of the reasons I've delayed writing this post despite having photographed the Sing Store is because I've found very little about its history. Property records indicate it was constructed in 1986, and that date lines up with the fact that the station doesn't have the small rectangular windows behind the cashier counter found on earlier iterations.

Besides that, I know Sing sold this station to an independent operator at some point in the late-1980's (I've not been "blown away" by Coffee County's historic property records).

So, here we are: an independent branded this station as "Stop & Go" until roughly 2017 when it was rebranded as a bp / Sunstate Oil. Interestingly, both the Troy store I mentioned earlier and the Opp station I have yet to see are branded as Sunstates as well, which makes me wonder if the three were sold off by Sing as a South Alabama package deal.

In any regard, the pump canopy appears to be brand new and is accented by bp's latest livery.

I've always liked how the light green accents from the pump toppers seem to carry over seamlessly to the light green band on the columns.

As for the front of the store, it too looks modern and refreshed despite some telling traits of a former Sing shining through.

For starters, the mansard roof can still easily be seen, which is a rarity in itself. Most stores, like Bradfordville, have long since removed the sloped roof in favor of a generic design.

On top of this, the original entry configuration is still present, just with an ice chest in front of the old gas payment window. And how could I forget to mention the corduroy concrete blocks!

Stepping inside, we see another sign of Sing in the rectangular tile – Sing's preferred flooring in the mid-1980's following the square terracotta's phase out.

The space in the distance previously home to Sing's dining nook is now used for the cashier counter (if only we could see it in this shot). At least the restrooms haven't moved!

The aisles were also rearranged at some point to run perpendicular to the checkout rather than to the entry doors, shifting them by 45°. The offset nature of these convenience stores likely makes them hard to configure, so I don't blame later tenants for changing things around.

This shot also showcases the Subway restaurant inhabiting the old cashier counter. It looks like a piece of the old sales floor was carved out as a seating area for the sandwich chain.

Taking a wider shot from the far corner of the store, we can see that a number of things have changed over the years; however, the original bones of the space are still recognizable.

Likewise, most of the refrigerated cases have remained in their original locations. It does look like somebody added a wood-paneled beer cave to the mix.

We'll take a slightly obscured look toward the old snack and frozen foods wall . . .

Followed by a glance toward the old garden & hardware section.

Anyhow, that will wrap up our interior coverage; let's head back outside to see what I may have missed.

I feel like I occasionally call Retail Retell out on matters where he contradicts his past statements, and today I get to call myself out. It turns out I had seen some of Sing's old air and water signs, and just didn't notice them at the time.

If you take a look at the cropped photo above, we see the original signage for the air and water station clear as day with the exact same font as was spotted at Jackson #4. Coincidence? I think not!

To make things even better, we have both signs still in place here and we can see a bit of the original blue paint revealed on the leftmost lamppost. Now I wish I had noticed these signs in 2022 and not just taken a haphazard photo in the general direction!

Since we've seen all of my photos, let's take a look at what the Google potato cam churned up over the years.

Street Views

While I'm glad I got to visit this former Sing for myself, this is where the real fun begins. Keep on reading.

Google Street View - April 2008

Oh my gosh, I cannot believe my eyes.

That, folks, is an original Sing shingled mansard roof and pump canopy! Possibly with original paint, to boot!

I would ask how those two things managed to survive until 2008, but the answer lies in the fact that Amoco never took possession of this store, and the independent operator never bothered to standardize the space.

That being said, I'm sure the inside had already been changed by this point considering how the Subway counter still had the pre-2016 look in my photos, and the Street View shots show the pre-2002 logo on one of the signs. For all I know, Subway could have moved in shortly following Sing's exodus.

Google Street View - May 2013

The 2013 imagery at least gives us a better look at the original Sing design – if only that stupid semi-truck wasn't blocking our full-frontal view!

Zooming in, we can see the original navy blue paint reveled on some of the parking lot lights. We can also look under the pump canopy and see the original advertisement boxes and pump spanners (all painted grey, unfortunately).

Google Street View - January 2016

January 2016 gives us our last glimpse at the former Sing, and by that point, the yellow shingles were in desperate need of some attention. At least we can finally get a look at the station without a truck parked out front, where we can see how the original Gilbarco Highline diesel pump survived the test of time. There's a chance this station opened with two MPD's like we see in the picture, but those pumps only date back to the early-2000's since they have a single nozzle rather than three separate ones for each grade.

Google Street View - January 2016

On top of seeing the original shingles and store configuration, we also find the original sign post complete with Sing's "Food & Deli" tagline! I was floored the first time I saw these images because I couldn't believe such a pristine Sing had survived this far into the Google Street View era.

The Star (Colorized with Adobe Photoshop) - Port St. Joe Sing - September 7, 1989

If you need a refresher, here's what the sign in Enterprise would have resembled. I'm not sure why there are two rectangular spaces above the "Food & Deli" block, but it's possible that a marquee was placed there with the Sing logo topping things off. Alternatively, there's a chance the logo was directly above "Food & Deli" while the portion reading "Stop & Go" was obscured by a shingled roof accent.

Google Street View - September 2018

The only thing worse than me missing out on such a well preserved station is the fact that it was remodeled only three years before I started the blog. Even in 2016, I could have taken a trip to Enterprise to photograph this Sing had I known it existed (and I potentially would have considering my 2016 photo of the sign outside Sing-Wilkes #1 in Thomasville).

Alas, what's past is past, and I can't turn back time as much as Cher wishes we could. If there is any solace in this, it's in the fact that I still got to (unintentionally) photograph the original air and water signs.

Aerial Views

Historic Aerials - 1985

Future site of Enterprise Sing

Google Earth - March 1997

Former Enterprise Sing

Google Earth - February 2013

Former Enterprise Sing in its original configuration

Google Earth - May 2017

Former Enterprise Sing receiving new gas pumps

Google Earth - April 2022

Former Enterprise Sing in its current configuration

That will conclude this week's portion of the post covering Sing Oil Company, but make sure to head over to The Albertsons Florida Blog to learn about nearby Dothan's former Albertsons store!