Back when I was growing up in a small
Midwestern city, my uncle, aunt, and the entire family had just moved
back to our town from California. They were your typical family but
with five children and a stable one at that. The five children were my
favourite cousins of the entire family and we got along great. We were
happy to have them back from living so far away. I remember how we
used to sit and talk politics and talked about everything under the
sun with them. There was always a conversation going on about
something. Several times they would tell of unusual events that
happened to them while they were living in California.
This story actually took place, and it
happened to them one night as they were driving around the Los Angeles
area. As Uncle Everitt told it along with my Aunt, the whole family
was driving home one evening around 10 p.m., or in that time frame. My
Uncle and the family were driving by a service station and it was
quite busy at the time. He wanted to buy gas, but the station had no
empty bays open to get any. He said that he looked again at his gas
gauge and decided that perhaps he had better get some just the same.
He had already made a right hand turn on the street past the station.
He decided to drive around the block and pull back in and get some
gas, as he was almost empty. After coming back around the block,
things would be quite different though. The station was all boarded up
and looked like it had been shut down for years. No lights on, no
people like they had seen just less than two minutes earlier. The
place was dark, the windows were boarded up with wood, and there were
no vehicles in the drive except for his own car load of startled
family. They all thought that perhaps they had made a mistake, but
they all agreed that they had only made a trip around the block and
they also all agreed that just minutes earlier the station was wide
open for business and that the drive was full of cars getting gas
pumped into them. This is the story that intrigued me for the past 30
some odd years. So what did they experience here? Two minutes of time
won't allow you to empty your drive of all cars getting gas, then
board the whole place up and put broken bottles and trash all over.
The place had been closed for years, or so it looked after the second
encounter. Was this some kind of time portal that they were in for a
brief moment? I just never knew what to think about that story, until
it the same exact thing happened to me 30 years later!!
This event happened only a couple of years
ago. I am still living in the same spot that I was then, in Georgia.
We live right on the Tennessee border near Chattanooga. In between
Chattanooga and where I live is a suburb named East Ridge Tn. This is
a city that I had lived in for 12 years prior to the experience and it
is a place that we travel through daily. There is one main drag
through the town and all of the businesses are on this street. There
is one Exxon Station Mini mart that is on the corner near Moore Rd.
This Exxon station was closed and boarded up. The previous year, one
of the female attendants was shot and killed there while on duty. The
owner of the station, could not handle the grief of what had happened
and decided to close the station. He boarded it all up and removed the
pumps and the sign out front.
This sunny Saturday, I was on my way to pick
up my son. He lived with his mother at the time, and it was my weekend
to have him. As I drove up the main drag in East Ridge, I looked at
the station, it was wide open. There was a lady with a bag of Doritos
in one arm, a child in the other. There were about 8 cars or more
scattered on both sides of the central building. I remember seeing the
attendant through the glass windows and several people getting gas. I
thought to myself, "they sure opened that place back up in a
hurry". I drive this route everyday. The place was wide open for
business and I was almost going to pull in and get some chips or
something, but I went on past the place. I went and picked up my son,
and when we came back down the road, you guessed it. The station (only
one on that side of the road in East Ridge) was boarded up and the
pumps and sign were gone. It looked as it had the day before. No one
there at all. The windows were boarded up as they should have been,
and everything was back to normal. The time frame in this was about 15
minutes. This was a bright sunny day. It couldn't have been a trick of
light or any mistake made about the station. This is the only fuel
stop in that vicinity on that side of the road.
So then I would ask, what is up with gas
stations and time portals? Not only did my Uncle/Aunt, and their
entire family have a time episode, but I had the exact same type of
thing happen to me also!! Are there little windows in time that we can
jump forward or backward through? Does this happen at random? How can
such a thing occur? I know what I saw. I even made an extra effort to
examine the gas station, because I couldn't believe that they could
open it back up that quickly from the previous day. So, it did get my
attention, and I looked carefully at what I was observing. I don't do
drugs, and limit myself to one or two beers at a time, when I drink. I
never drink on Saturday mornings. So what was it? Hmmmmmmmm? How did
this happen? Why did this happen?
It makes no sense whatsoever. But gas
stations seem to have the ability to travel through time, and show you
scenes from long ago, that happened to them earlier. It must seem
important to gas stations, that they show you how much business they
used to have at one time. "Hey buddy, look at how busy I used to
be, back when I was a real gas station". Hmmmmmm. It's an odd
place out there sometimes....
Gtars invites you to comment on the
message board about this article or tell a tale with similar events.
Hope you enjoyed the first session of Odyssey of Oddities.
