The Olde Station

Introduction:

Well son, I’m dying. Ain’t got much time left and don’t really care to know how long it’ll take, but my days are numbered. I don’t remember much of anything but I wrote down something I want you to read. You don’t have to now, but I’d like you to when you’re feeling down or lonesome. I’m 72, it’s been a long time on this ole earth. I’m happy I reckon. Ain’t got too much stuff to say to be honest. I loved your mama. I loved your sister. I recall the day I met your mother like it was a daydream. Like a mirage on a projector screen. She wore a heavy brown jacket in the middle of July. Her hair was brown. I had never seen a person so beautiful. I recall her face in that moment when are eyes locked. There wasn’t a thing I’d want more then to be in that moment again. I said hello, I don’t remember anything after that. I only remember that we had a first date a few days later. At a carnival if you can believe it. I try to think, I wanna remember more, I thought there would be more.

Apologies for rambling, you know how I get when I’m deadly serious at being aloof.

By the time you read this my spirit will be over some scenic pasture. This thing I wrote, well it’s a collection of sorts. Remember when I worked at that gas station up in Carter when I was in my 20s? I told you about how it was in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but flatland fifty miles in all directions.

Well for starters it wasn’t in Carter.

Your granddaddy had me working all day and night. Stocking the shelves and sitting at that counter, all by my lonesome. The place was damn near mine completely. Old man came into some money somehow, never knew where from bastard only ever drove a truck for 30 years.

Nevertheless he bought the station and at the point I started caring for it he’d had for at least a year or so, but the sumbitch had to drive that godforsaken truck for weeks on end still so he had other people tend to it. I don’t why he didn’t just quit driving. Maybe didn’t want to stop moving. Couldn’t stay in one place for more than a week anyway.

Only advice he ever told me was “don’t take no advice from no one, make your own way”. Kinda funny how that was advice on a technicality. Never really cared about what that old fart said anyway.

4 years I spent at that place.

It was absolutely silent in the evening. Rare that a passerby would enter at night. Nothing but the sound of the old fluorescent lights and my little Panasonic RF-562D AM FM SW Shortwave Transistor Radio. I had to sleep there as it was too far away from anything and I didn’t have a car to try.

Food would be delivered to me by this tall guy named Burt. Burt had to be close to 6’7, guy was towering, husky with broad shoulders, looked like he’d be a great football player, told me he played in college but his knees got too bad and he had to quit. He always wore this Houston Oilers windbreaker with beige cargo pants no matter the weather. Told me his favorite hobby was collecting trucker hats, no matter what they said he’d pick em’ up and collect them. The dashboard of his beat up Chevy pickup was aligned with nearly 30 of em. All different colors, materials and styles.

We never talked much except the occasional small talk about the weather or sports. Before he left he always asked me what I’d want for lunch or dinner the next day. No matter the request he’d always get it. You asked for Chinese at noon and Korean BBQ at night? Burt had it for ya. I wondered how he was able to get all of it from. Considering what kind of place I was working at, I sort of got a general idea.

Now the thing I have to tell you that’s a bit important, is that this gas station I worked in. It was a bit of a rarity of sorts. It was in the middle of nowhere sure, but where it’s placed is actually a bit of a mystery. You could only find it by mer chance. It lay upon a stretch of road that could only be driven by those who happened upon it.

Maybe I’m not saying this right.

You know when you begin a dream and it sort of just, happens. It starts and you’re immediately at a place and you don’t know how you got there? That’s how you got to the road. It ran forever, into endless arrays of fields and gentle nothingness. One could drive it quite literally forever. It was there when ya needed it and sometimes when ya didn’t.

This gas station was one of the only places on it.

Which is how we arrived at what I’m writing this for.

Son, these are some of the stories of the passers by. I met while working at the olde station. I don’t remember much but I remember every face that came into my store and made the bells on top of the door chime in unison. I’m not sure what to do with them, so I’m giving them to you. Maybe you’ll find this useful in your life, maybe not. In the end, it’s a thing I give to you.

Perhaps one day we’ll meet again and it’ll be on that road, I’ll see you and wave my hand and we’ll all be able to travel it together.

Maybe one day.

Happy trails kiddo, see you in the big wide yonder

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Sincerely yours, Dad