The Blade story was front page on Dec. 16, 1936, top of the fold, right under a banner headline announcing a tragic plane crash, “Nag wants oil change, maybe — maybe not.” Early that morning, before dawn, William Goetz had opened the filling station on Lagrange Street and Detroit Avenue only to spy an unlikely customer poking its long muzzle out of the grease pit. It was a wandering horse which somehow managed to stumble into the deep, narrow vault without getting hurt. The horse calmly stood there as if he was safe in his barn stall, with grease instead of straw at his feet. Goetz realized the horse had no room to take a jump start out of that hole, so he got help from Darlington & Co., a rendering plant that brought a derrick to lift the horse out.
