Just up the road from me is a mini-Shell station, not really a full-fledged service station, for its main service is at the tap or swipe of your card, the gasoline becomes available (if approved).
That little Shell station recently had a total replacement (all I ever had replaced were my hips).
I saw the yellow ribbons with the words “closed” streamed across them (opposite meaning from Tony Orlando’s big hit). However, I later missed the “main event” of the building’s demolition and rebuilding, since I (and other patrons) naturally sought out open gas stations in the meantime.
Then, one day, after seemingly not much time at all, the new station was open! It seemed like the new building was built in no time, but time sometimes plays tricks! I stopped by and asked the cashier if the new building was “pre-fab.” She said it wasn’t. I told her the speed with which it had been put up had caused me to think it had been prefabbed and brought in by something like a Sikorsky CH-53 Super Stallion Helicopter (50 cal. and all).
A huge flatscreen with “gas” ads playing is mounted on the building’s frontward side. It’s the size of some of those really large flatscreens at Walmart. The largest of those Walmart screens always reminded me of the drive-in theater. But when actually seeing something resembling a Walmart Super Screen TV screen mounted there, with earth and sky all around, the drive-in analogy does not hold up.
A new, alabaster (well, white) concrete lot has also been laid, reminding me of those people who replace their scraggly grass all at once with transplanted squares of healthy turf (living, or “Astro”). The old concrete had become a progressively grayer canvas, upon which dozens, nay hundreds of foot-pressed, tire-pressed dark blobs of spat-out bubble gum and chewing gum stood out ( a different kind of “Wrigley Field,” or a rather nasty work of art in the random manner of Jackson Pollock).
At the time, freshly fallen autumn leaves lay on that still pristine concrete surface, while a misty rain fell. Some of the wet leaves had been run over numerous times by car tonnage, leaving leaf imprints in faint brown. This caused me to remember my old job back at the Danville Science Center, when we collected colorful fall leaves for science and art activities with the multitudes of visiting students. And coincidence of coincidences! On the heel of that thought, there, pressed onto the concrete, was the partial remains of a little Danville Science Center visitor’s sticker, its distinctive “atom” remaining. Someone, be it parent or child, had made the Science Center their previous stop.
That little Shell gas station also reminds me of those “mini houses” that sometimes appear in ads nowadays. The contrast between the pictures of their exteriors and interiors always amazes me; kind of like stepping through the door of The Little Brown Church in the Vale to find that you’ve just entered Notre Dame! Maybe those mini-house ad’s interior pictures are “done with mirrors,” like the automobile’s outside rear view mirror with its warning as to how “Objects in the mirror may appear………..”(just now, the late “Meatloaf” comes to mind).
The previous station had, over time developed a “crevice” in its siding, opening up a fortuitous area for bird-nest building, as evidenced by a nest, so built. Perhaps, the aging of the new building will provide another little “bird nook;” but for now, there is none, as every angle of its outside construction is too pristine.
There’s even a new batch of gas pumps. But nothing really “jumps out” at me as far as the design of these pumps goes, as the old pumps were already new enough to have that disconcerting, one-way “conversational” aspect to them. I remember when I was first startled by the “Talking-and-singing gas pump TV.” At the time, I almost dropped the nozzle!
The outside storage sheds look new, as well, but perhaps it’s just a paint job.
Everything has been made new, or newer (sounding somewhat Biblical).
As I drove by the store’s window, one of the long-time employees was reaching out to give change to a customer, along with his purchased “Nabs.” She was talking and gesturing unusually sprightly from how she had behaved for the many months I had seen her at her work before. And her hair had lost some of its silver sheen, making it not quite as white. I thought to myself that possibly, her bright new work surroundings might have had a rejuvenating effect on her, figuratively, of course. And maybe this had inspired her to add just the least little bit of color to her hair, effecting a slight nod towards youth, nothing dramatic.
All of a sudden, I felt an overwhelming “need to know!” There was something I must see in order to make a chronological comparison. But with the flurry of business occurring there, I had to drive on.
And anyway, the counting of gray hairs is a personal, lonely task which one performs only on himself.
For only he knows the number at the start.
