There must be a logical explanation…Right?!

January 2^nd, 1994… When Jesse was 2-years old we were driving from Thunder Bay, Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia after the Christmas holidays (a 30 hr drive). It was an extremely cold day (-30 degrees celcius not counting the wind chill). We left in the late afternoon and didn't hit Wawa (a small northern Ontario town) until around midnight. I decided to keep driving and debated whether to stop for gas -- we had more than a half tank and I didn't feel like turning off the highway so I decided to just keep going. My mother had just bought a new car and gave me her old one (lucky me moving up from an ’82 chevette to an ’87 celica!), and this was the first time I had driven it any distance. What I didn't know was that the gas gauge went down really slowly at first, but then very quickly towards the end -- so whereas it had taken a few hours to use up the first half tank of gas, suddenly one hour later, the gas light came on!

We were in the middle of nowhere, it was one o'clock in the morning, it was a Sunday night so the highway was deserted, and it was freeeeeezing cold. It takes a lot to rattle my nerves, but I was suddenly quite scared. I figured some trucker was going to find me and my baby frozen to death on the side of the road in the morning. All I could do was keep going, praying for a gas station, and decided that if I didn’t find one in the next 20 min, I would pull over and conserve the bit of gas that was left to turn on the engine (i.e., heater) periodically so we wouldn’t freeze to death.

Right at about the point that I had given up hope, suddenly, there on the left-hand side of the road I saw one… a gas station!!!  It was a bit run-down, but there were two gas pumps. Waves of relief washed over me… followed by discouragement knowing there was no way they’d be open. But to my surprise, there was a light on in the building and an “open” sign in the window… so I pulled up to the pump and waited for the attendant. No-one came so I figured it must be a self-serve station. I got out and after a bit of fiddling with the pump trying to figure out how to work it (you had to pull a lever across -- not a kind I had encountered before) I was able to fill the car with gas. Then I went up to the office to pay… only to find that the door was locked!

I knocked on the door several times and finally a sleepy-looking dishevelled man came to the door and motioned from behind the glass that they were closed. I shouted back that I had just filled my car up with gas (and I was a bit irritated because I was completely frozen standing out there in the wind!). Finally he unlocked the door and opened it an inch and repeated that they were closed. I explained that I had just filled my car with gas and had come up to pay for it. He mumbled something about stupid Joe forgetting to lock up the pumps and took my money. At that point I was thinking that this was all quite the miracle… I was so incredibly lucky that "Joe" was absent-minded that night (I mean what are the chances?!). This guy was very grumpy and didn't seem like he would have been willing to help us out if the pumps had in fact been turned off for the night.

Those events would be miraculous enough, but the story continues...

I was getting very tired at this point and decided that we would stop at the next motel we came to. About an hour later, we came upon signs of civilization a few kilometres before Sault Ste. Marie, and pulled up to a motel. As I was registering for a room, I told the sleepy lady at the front desk about our close call, and how fortunate we were that there was a gas station there and that Joe had forgotten to lock up the pumps. Without even looking up as she filled out a form for us, she said, "There's no gas station between here and Wawa. I'm certain that there isn't." I said that there must be because I had just filled up my car with gas and I had driven for about an hour and twenty minutes past Wawa when we came upon the gas station. She mumbled something about my being mistaken and I was too tried to argue so that was the end of the discussion. I figured she was just kind of “out of it” since we had obviously woken her up.

The next morning, we went for breakfast in the small coffee shop attached to the motel. There were a few locals were talking. When we walked in I swear that they all turned and looked up at Jesse and me… then I just had the feeling that they were talking about us and glancing over at us as we were waiting for our food. Eventually, one of the men came over to our table. As he started to talk, he glanced back over at his friends and winked… then with a funny half-smile, he said "Soooo, I hear you had an encounter with old Joe last night!"  It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about… but I said, "Oh, you mean the gas station? Actually, I don't think his name was Joe because he said something about Joe forgetting to turn off the pumps." Then the man said, "Well, you know, that place isn't there any more. Joe's gas station burned down 30 years ago." I was all confused… and he turned around again and grinned at his friends… so I laughed and said that this gas station was definitely still there! I said that if I had a few hours to spare, I'd take him and show him the gas station. He said I needn’t bother because it wouldn't be there… and added that I wasn't the first person to get gas at Joe's since it had burned down… and that I probably wouldn't be the last. But all the time he was talking, he was grinning and kept looking over at his friends and winking. In short, I didn't believe him (but there was a tiny trace of doubt… I kept thinking about the weird old pumps it had).

The trace of doubt was big enough that the next time I drove to Thunder Bay, I took the same route in order to confirm that there was indeed a gas station there. We passed the motel we had stayed at and then kept our eyes peeled for the gas station. Kilometre after kilometre passed under our tires but no sign of any gas station did we see. In fact, it was incredibly desolate. We didn't even see a place where a gas station *could* have been -- no clearings beside the road or places where there was no ditch and a turn-off could have recently been. Since then I have driven that route many times and always fill my tank in Sault Ste. Marie or in Wawa (depending on what direction I'm travelling) because if there was a gas station along that route in 1994, it is definitely not there now. And I thank Joe for forgetting to turn off the pumps that night. It is quite possible that he may have saved the lives of my small son and I…. I still get chills when I think about it…!