In 2015 I met over pancakes with then 93-year-old Virginia McAllister and her son, Lonnie, 67, both of Fayetteville, to write about what has become perhaps my most fascinating GodNod account.
Whenever I write about events that can't be rationally explained, it's inevitable some readers will respond with compelling stories of their own. If you have one, please share it with me.
As I wrote nearly seven years ago, Virginia recalled vividly her family's inexplicable night in 1954 along a rambling dirt road in Oklahoma. So did Lonnie, who was 6 when their family experienced their astounding GodNod.
Virginia, Lonnie, daughter Janet, and husband A.D. "Mack" McAllister Jr., a prominent Fayetteville lawyer and former city attorney, were driving from Fayetteville to Virginia's Texas hometown. They headed out of Fayetteville in the afternoon and southward along U.S. 59 into Oklahoma.
Near the community of Antlers, Mack turned left onto a remote, 12-mile-long cut-across road he'd been told about to trim considerable time off their trip. Lonnie and Janet were in the back seat as darkness descended.
Virginia said her husband suddenly noticed their car's gas gauge sitting on empty. By then, it was pitch-black outside and they were in the middle of nowhere. Both sides of the narrow road were covered in thick brush and trees.
Worries began in the darkness. They wondered if they'd have to spend the night in the car should the gasoline run dry. Would anyone else happen along? They hadn't seen a single car. Did anyone even use this eerie road?
They were on the verge of panic when they rounded a curve and happened across a dilapidated and badly overgrown service station on their left side. It had a single gasoline pump.
"I remember that strange old station had vines and brush growing on and around it," said Lonnie. "We all wondered why any business would be located way out in the middle of nowhere. And why it would it even be open well after dark?"
"We were just so relieved to find a gas station in a place where it seemed nothing should be," added Virginia, who then was living at Butterfield Trail Village. "And it was reassuring to see a man inside. There wasn't a house, or anything else to be seen out there the whole time."
Lonnie accompanied his late father into the tiny station. "I remember very well how remote and covered with trees and bushes that little station was," he said. "I even asked my parents if there might be bears along that spooky road."
He recalled the store was lighted by a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. "I also remember it had a pull string hanging down," he said.
All gassed up, the McAllisters drew a deep mutual breath of relief and continued to Blossom. Upon returning to Fayetteville over this shortcut, the McAllisters agreed they'd stop and again thank the man who'd been their unlikely savior a few nights earlier.
They looked, and scratched their heads when they couldn't find the place after carefully searching the roadside. They didn't even see a space beside the narrow road that could have accommodated a small business, and couldn't find anyone to ask about it.
"The little station was there only at the time we so badly needed it," said Virginia.
On subsequent journeys along the same route to Texas from Fayetteville through the ensuing years, the McAllisters would search in vain for any sign of the single-pump station with a bare bulb. Each time was the same. They still didn't find the slightest indication it ever existed. There wasn't anything to be seen from the car except thick woods and brush along the 12-mile stretch of highway without a name or number. "We wondered together each time why that strange road was even there," said Lonnie, a retired financier.
The family often discussed the strange evening among themselves in the ensuing years, said Virginia. "But we all decided not to talk about it other than among ourselves because we thought others would think we were crazy or fantasizing. But this story is true, I can assure you." With Mack McAllister's credibility and earned standing in Fayetteville, I can only imagine how he must have felt about discussing it publicly after that experience.
Virginia, who remained alert and active after losing Mack in 2001, also was a prominent member of the community. She owned and managed the ladies' clothing shop Matilda's, located for decades on the town square alongside the Bank of Fayetteville. Mack and Virginia were married 59 years.
Their daughter Janet, who passed away in 2011 at age 66, was married to Fayetteville pharmacist Carl Collier.
"I knew I wanted to relate our experience with the gas station that wasn't there while Lonnie and I are still alive to tell it together," Virginia told me. "Which is why we're talking with you. I wish we'd done this when Janet and Mack were alive. Like me, Lonnie clearly remembers everything that happened to us that night."
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.