The county clerk said, Mrs Hansen, stay right there, and when she came back on the line she was almost laughing. She said, Helen, do you understand what Arnie had under that cash drawer. The town hall is sitting on your land.
The paper in the slot under Arnies register was a deed, and a lease, from 1952. The ground the Gibbon town hall stands on belonged to Arnies father, and his father had leased it to the town for one dollar a year, with one condition written right into it. The lease held for so long as a Hansen family business operated on Highway 30.
Hansens Service on Highway 30 was that business. The moment the town condemned my station and shut it down, the Hansen business on Highway 30 would end, and the lease under the town hall would end with it, and the land beneath their own offices would revert to me.
The mayor put his hand on Arnies pump and told me it had had its time. He did not know his own town hall was borrowing its ground from the Hansens, a dollar at a time, since 1952.
The county clerk pulled the lease. The town attorney read it and went pale. If they wanted to keep their town hall where it sat, they needed a Hansen business to keep running on Highway 30, which is to say they needed my station open, not bulldozed for a Dollar General.
The council had a very quiet meeting. The condemnation was dropped. Dollar General built on the empty lot by the grain elevator instead, which was always the sensible place for it.
Arnie told me in 1974, the first time the town tried to buy him out, Helen, if they ever come back, look under the drawer. It took forty-nine years, but they came back, and I looked, and Arnie was waiting there with a dollar-a-year lease and a smile I could almost see. The coffee is still fresh. The farmers still come. The pumps are still ours.