Community mourns after Coligny gas station closes. What’s next for ‘majestic place’
When you walk into the Kangaroo Express gas station on Hilton Head Island’s Pope Avenue, the loud doorbell that used to alert the clerk that someone entered still rings.
The store is gutted: The coolers have been ripped out, and crews are removing the gas tanks from beneath the former gas station’s pumps outside.
A paper sign taped on the door reads “STORE CLOSED. THANK YOU HHI.”
But the doorbell still rings.
A lot of south islanders will tell you they didn’t always want their presence announced to all when they walked into the Kangaroo. The gas station has been a Coligny-area mainstay since at least the late 1990s, and its florescents have shone upon many a patron looking for a tall boy long after bars closed or one recovering just a few hours later.
Matt Stock, a 12-year islander, wrote a short ode to the gas station for The Southender Magazine. In it, he thanked the staff for “round-the-clock, friendly, cool, non judgmental convenience and hospitality.”
“We’ve all had our moments here, some not our finest,” he wrote. “But dammit sometimes you need three Miller Lite double deuces, a pack of Camels, some frosty chocolate milk, a pair of sunglasses, and a roll of Tums at 6:20 in the morning. And Ralph and the crew always had the hook-up.”
The gas station, which many shambly islanders of yesteryear have trusted to “keep their secrets,” received an outpouring of support and memories online.
South-end resident Susan Conlin O’Neil said her German shepherd, Max, dragged her by the leash to the Kangaroo gas station after her husband, who bought cigarettes from the gas station nearly every day, passed away in 2015.
“All Max wanted to do was see if his Dad was hiding inside. He walked the entire store, even going out back to look for my husband,” she wrote about the station.
“The staff knew my dog and actually let him inside,” she added. “I’m going to miss that place.”
Others had more general remembrances of the gas station.
“R.I.P. ... a majestic place,” Yacht Cove resident Ryan Fennessey wrote.
On Tuesday, crews were removing the gas tanks from the Kangaroo station’s premises. The soda fountain and coffee machines were still inside the store. Melted Slushie mix was still in the machine.
William Bird, a Columbia-based lawyer who owns the property, said the Kangaroo gas station’s lease was up, and the store owner decided not to renew. He said the rent on the property had not changed.
Bird said the building will not be demolished, but he would not say whether any new business there will be a gas station. He said the property has not yet drawn any interest from developers.
The loss of the gas station, while it seems inconsequential amid the other massive changes on Hilton Head, represents a small piece of history and, for some, a culture that defined their mid-20s as young people who worked hard and played harder.
There’s a small sense of grief that really signifies something more — the loss of what once was on Hilton Head.
Heather Rath, a longtime islander who now works as a marketing representative for Coligny Plaza, spends hours of her adult life tooling around the area she once lived prior to getting married, having three children and softly tucking away her years as a wild-at-heart young adult on the island.
When she was living on North Forest Beach, she and her now-husband Joe DiMaria got to know each other on walks to the beach that ended at the gas station to pick up whatever they needed.
“For a lot of people, the Kangaroo may not have been spectacular, or all that clean, but it represented a community of people living in Forest Beach, working our tushes off, hanging out at Big Bamboo, going to the beach every single day, having house parties and picking up late-night 12-packs of small Coronas at midnight,” she said. “The store even started carrying limes for us — probably the only fruit in there.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2021 at 4:30 AM.
