On Centre: Bald Eagle Area

Snow Shoe man always in motion

Chris Rosenblum

Sometimes, Max Rees chose kindness over business.

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He gave soup and hamburgers to Interstate 80 motorists stranded at the Rees Exit 22 Truck Stop in Snow Shoe while their cars were repaired. Those with empty tanks and wallets might receive enough gas to reach the next exit.

Even paying customers could count on a freebie. As one Snow Shoe resident recalled, Rees usually threw in a cheerful thanks with purchases from his Exxon station.

Twenty years ago, Rees handed over the truck stop to his five sons, who continue to run the local fixture. But he couldn’t stay away.

“He was still there every day,” said Greg Rees, of Snow Shoe, the oldest brother. “He went through the garage the day before he died, in his power chair, looking things over.”

Various ailments finally stopped Rees, at age 82, earlier this month.

Growing up in Karthaus, Clarence and Snow Shoe, he had already sailed the seas in the Merchant Marine when the Air Force drafted him at the end of World War II. He ended up a crew chief in occupied Japan, fixing P-61 Black Widow night fighters.

Back home in Snow Shoe, he wasted little time making a living. With an old Army truck at first, he began hauling coal. Then he sold life insurance, so skillfully he won laurels from his company for years.

In 1952, still single, he invested in two lots along a mostly empty stretch of state Route 144. Up went a two-bay garage to store his truck.

Three years later, he and his bride, Marion, built a home beside the garage. Throughout the decade and the 1960s, he acquired surrounding lots until he owned about 20 acres.

When I-80 came along and the Snow Shoe exit disgorged cars right across the highway from his property, Rees was sitting pretty. All the offers for his land only confirmed it.

“He said, ‘If they want to pay me a large sum of money for a small piece of land, I’ll just build my own station,’ ” Marion Rees remembered.

So he did, choosing Exxon, building to its specifications and opening in 1971. Before long, he noted the steady stream of trucks — with hungry drivers — and cleared a grove behind the station, paved a parking lot and launched the Snow Shoe Exit 22 Restaurant.

It was 1973. By then, the original garage was gone, but Rees had his home, a busy restaurant and a bustling station kept hopping with repairs and towing calls. And still he wasn’t finished. In 1975, the truck traffic convinced him to add a diesel garage. He also expanded into used car sales and later took over a nearby sandwich shop.

His plans for a motel on the property, however, fell through.

Given his energy, Rees wasn’t about to putter around after retiring from changing tires, fixing engines and towing. He focused on the auto dealership, snapping up vehicles at car auctions — just as he used to buy old dump trucks from the state.

He kept going to the sales even as his health declined. After a lifetime of rolling along, it was hard to put on the brakes.

Chris Rosenblum writes a weekly column about happenings in the Bald Eagle area. Send him news at crosenbl@centredaily.com or call 231-4620.