3 on Thursday
Songs, stories, and things worth noticing. Every Thursday.
Thursday, August 20, 2026 · 7 min read
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1. THE STORY
Arneson’s Direct Service is the one gas station in my small town where an attendant comes out and pumps the gas for you. My dad always goes to the Holiday station on the west side of town, but for some reason today we stop at this one.
It is strange to watch my father sit in his car while another man pumps his gas. My father does everything himself—fixes his own car, mows his own yard, hangs his own drywall, shoots his own deer.
The gas station attendant is a man in his late twenties or early thirties. He has a mustache and wears blue cotton coveralls with a white patch, Jerry stitched in red cursive. He asks my father how much, and my father says, “Fill her up.”
Jerry lifts the metal lever, and the machine begins making its grinding noise. From the car, I hear the gas cap come off and the nozzle go in. My dad turns the key to accessory mode, and we watch the dashboard needle mosey up from E.
As the fuel flows, Jerry grabs the window washer and three paper towels. He lifts the wiper blades and scrubs the windshield. There is one bug splatter that sticks, and Jerry goes over it again and again until it’s gone. After each long pull with the squeegee, he wipes the rubber blade with the bunched-up towels, leaving no streaks.
I don’t mention this to my father, who also leaves no streaks, but I know he is satisfied. I’ve been in enough cars where the drivers squeegee their own windshields to know there are some who have talent and patience and some who do not. For example, I once watched my friend’s dad, and he must have either been in a hurry or farsighted because it looked worse than Mr. Wensloff’s dry-erase board in algebra class.
After the windshield has been cleaned, Jerry checks the oil. He raises the hood and pulls out the long, whip-like gauge. He wipes it off, puts it back in, and pulls it out again, looking at the end. I want to save Jerry the trouble and tell him my dad changes his own oil and not to worry himself, but I don’t.
I know they call it “full service,” meaning you’re not supposed to worry about anything. And I suppose Jerry instills that confidence in his customers. But I can’t help wondering if he has done everything as well as my dad would have. Was the gas cap on tight? Did any of the tires seem to have a slow leak? There is an exchange of trust that happens when someone does your dirty work. They put on their coveralls while you stay put in the car. And that’s that.
But perhaps a more important question I begin to have is, What if Jerry did the work better than my father? What then?
As of five minutes ago, I now know the two could compete in a windshield-washing tournament and the winner would be anyone’s guess.
It is the sort of question that comes with growing up. Is my dog bigger than your dog? Can my father beat up your father? Is my family the best?
I’m not so sure anymore.
Around this same time, my grandmother breaks her hip. She’s in her eighties. While she recovers in the hospital, my dad, my uncles, and my aunt Evadell—the only daughter among seven kids—have a family meeting with my grandfather in his living room. They are discussing a place I know nothing about but will learn a great deal about in the near future. It’s called a nursing home.
Tempers flare. Voices are louder than usual, and my grandfather sits forward on the couch with his elbows on his knees, wringing his fingers.
It makes me uncomfortable to see my grandfather upset. I’ve never seen the grownups talk like this to each other, and I wonder now if I was supposed to stay home for this trip to Grandpa and Grandma’s house. Looking around, I realize I am the only kid. I want one of my sisters or cousins to go outside with me so I can ask, “What’s happening to our family? I thought we were perfect.”
Of course, over the next several years it’s confirmed we are not. No family is. All that happens is that a kid grows old enough to realize it.
I am in high school when the Arneson family, who own the full-service gas station, move into my neighborhood. They have a five-year-old named Craig who rides his bike over in the mornings during the summer.
“Hi Aaron, how’s your day?”
He yells this while waving from about half a block away. He is wearing a blue tank top and black shorts. His hair has been buzzed for the season.
I wave. He pedals over and puts his left foot on the curb.
I tell him my day’s been going pretty good so far and ask him the same.
“Oh, pretty good,” he says.
There is a lull as he looks out into the distance with his Kool-Aid mustache. He offers that it’s nice we’ve gotten some rain lately.
“The farmers could sure use it,” he says.
Having only sisters, I like having Craig around. He is the next best thing to a kid brother.
One day Craig has a handful of crab apples from the neighbor’s tree. He eats them sitting on the curb while watching me and my friends skateboard.
“How old are you?” someone asks.
Craig turns his head and focuses on his right hand, now held up but full of apples. With the concentration of a heart surgeon, he begins to release his fingers one by one. Realizing the impossibility of the task, he lets go of the crab apples. They roll onto the grass and into the street. With his hand now free, he looks at my friend and smiles.
“Five,” he says, showing him all five fingers.
The morning of my seventeenth birthday, my mom tells me that Craig is waiting for me on the front porch. I peek through the window in the door and see that he is sitting in the white wicker chair. His legs dangle and kick back and forth. A trumpet case sits on the floor next to the chair.
He has told me many times about his trumpet: his grandfather gave it to him. His grandfather used to play, and the trumpet belonged to him.
I walk out. As he opens the case, Craig tells me he’s been practicing “Happy Birthday” and would now like to play it for me.
I watch as his face contorts in concentration and he blows the first note.
“Whoops,” he says.
I tell him that’s all right, and he starts again.
After a few false starts and intermissions and notes that we’ll call artistic license, he finishes the song and smiles. He is the proudest five-year-old I will likely ever see.
Years and years go by.
I am a middle-aged man now with a family of my own. I visit my parents, who still live in the house I grew up in. My father and I stand in the yard talking when a pickup truck parks across the street. A man in dirty overalls gets out and begins to cross the lawn. With him are two young girls and a woman, presumably his wife.
My father turns to me and asks if I know who it is. He asks in a way that tells me he does.
“No,” I say.
Wearing a big smile, the man reaches out his giant palm and says, “Remember me?”
Not far from where he dropped the crab apples decades earlier, Craig Arneson introduces me to his family. His girls cling to their father’s leg, shy at first, then run off to play with toys in the yard.
Craig and I reminisce and catch up on the past twenty-five years. He tells me he works at Northland Tire off Highway 11. He uploads videos to TikTok about tire repair. He takes out his phone and shows me. Many have thousands of views.
We exchange phone numbers and follow each other on the various social media platforms. The things we all do nowadays to keep in touch.
After a while, we say goodbye and wave, him from his truck, me from the lawn.
That was a few years ago now.
But now I am thinking back to Arneson’s full-service gas station. Remembering how I used to fill my bike tires with the compressor they left on after hours for kids like me and any driver in need. Remembering my dad stopping there that one day, Jerry taking care of us and raising questions in my young mind. The crab apples falling from Craig’s little hand. His trumpet rendition of “Happy Birthday.” The tire-repair videos on his phone.
And it occurs to me that a humble little gas station offering full service might be easy to overlook in a community. You might think of it mainly as a convenience for a single mom with a car full of kids, or the elderly, or the well-to-do—anyone thankful to have someone like Jerry take care of them.
But that leaves out someone like me, who, as far as I can remember, got gas there only once and still came away with something that—to this day—I can only describe as full service.
Love,
Aaron
2. LISTEN
The complete upcoming album is now available to hear in the Listening Room, before it is mixed and mastered. Listen here →
3. NOTICE
Some places do more than what they’re there to do. A gas station sells gas, a diner serves food, a barber cuts hair—but sometimes those places become part of the fabric of a community. Is there a place like that in your life right now? One that gives you something you didn’t exactly go there to get?
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