Gas Lights

by Jeff Baker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here’s my Friday Flash Fics Christmas story! We’ll be taking a break for the holidays, and be back with another prompt picture January 5^th, 2024. Until then, thank you for participating and thank you for reading. More great stories to come! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! —-jeff

We were lucky the snow held off a few days when we decided to drive out to D’Artagnan, Kansas for Christmas. I grew up there but I hadn’t been back for Christmas in about four years. My husband Miles and I drove out for a visit every summer but Mom & Dad had come to our place in Wichita for Christmas the last few years.

My big brother Lance Biggs had actually flown into town on business the week before Christmas, stayed with us and the three of us drove out two days before the holiday as soon as Miles got off work.

It was kind of fun, really. The weather was nice and we felt a little like kids on a car trip with the folks.

“Except nobody’s fighting over the radio,” Miles said grinning.

We stopped a couple of places to gas up, use the restrooms and grab snacks. Miles standing in the parking lot gawking at the Kansas prairie.

“A lot different than where I grew up in Wisconsin.”

He and I had met in College over in Wichita about ten years ago. We’d both been nineteen. Now we were all in our early thirties.

Lance was driving for the last leg of the trip, down a back road that we always used as a shortcut. “The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh,” he’d started to sing.

My Brother could never sing!

It had gotten dark. We could see a couple of farmhouses and a grain elevator with a sprinkle of Christmas lights and the lights of the town in the distance topped by the modern water tower next to the High School as we turned back onto the highway into town.

“Gotta love that water tower,” Miles said from the back seat.

“Yeah,” I said wistfully.

“Hey, Lonnie,” Lance said to me. “Remember Grandpa Biggs’ old gas station?”

“Oh, yeah!” I said with a smile.

“Remember how we went there after school sometimes and tried to help him out?” Lance said.

I laughed again. “Yeah, and he’d send us up to the drugstore to buy candy to get us out of the way! But you were the one who actually got a part-time job there.”

“Yeah,” Lance laughed. “Until my grades slipped and I had to quit! That was just before Granddad retired and sold the store.”

I looked back at Miles. “It was a knicknack shop last time I looked.”

“Mmmm.” Miles murmured.

“Can’t believe he’s been gone ten years now,” I mused.

Lance turned the car down onto Main Street.

“Look at all those decorations,” Miles said.

There were a few houses and then shops and the main intersection, some of the buildings with strings of lights and decorated trees.

“Hey, remember when he’d have the station all decorated for Christmas?” Lance said.

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering.

Before we got to the intersection, Miles turned right.

“Hey, Mom & Dad’s house is back that way,” I said thumbing behind us.

“I know,” he said as he turned left down the street. “Take a look.”

Ahead a few blocks was the old gas station. Lance pulled the car into the lot. The old pumps weren’t there but the poles holding the towel dispenser and air hose were still there. There was a string of lights between them. There was a little Christmas tree lit up in the front window, and a plastic snowman standing cheerily to one side. A big Santa’s sleigh was parked in front of the old garage doors and a big cement block I remembered was wrapped like a Christmas package. And there were twinkling lights around the windows and on top of the little building.

“Oh, my gosh!” I breathed. “That almost looks like…my God! Those are Grandpa’s decorations! The ones he used to put up! How…?”

“Thank your Husband,” Lance said. “Last year when I was up for Christmas and I told him about decorating the store and that Mom still had those same decorations, he suggested somebody do this.”

“They talked to the lady who runs the place now and she agreed to put up the old decorations,” Miles said. “Your Brother helped. The lady thought it was nice.”

“We thought a lot of people in town would like it,” Lance said. “We thought you would like it.”

“Aw, man!” I said. “Thanks!”

We sat there for a few minutes, the lights twinkling onto the car.

“Let’s get home,” I said.

We drove back to our folks’ house, the house Lance and I grew up in, the three of us singing “Jingle Bells” with the windows rolled down, laughing all the way.

—end–