I ran my dad’s gas station for twelve years while he borrowed against it to pay for my brother’s Cabo wedding and two divorce lawyers. When the bank finally took it, I bought it for $240,000. At our Fourth of July cookout, Mom cried, “That was promised to your brother,” and he kicked over the cooler. Two weeks later, his ex-wife walked in holding a folder and asked which half belonged to her…

I figured I’d eventually buy a little repair place somewhere else. I wasn’t going to spend my whole life building a business just so my brother could inherit it.

But that plan got complicated because Dad kept borrowing money.

The first time was in 2019.

Chance married Brandy, a funny, outspoken woman from Ansley who worked at the school cafeteria and cleaned motel rooms during the summer.

Her family offered to host a reception at the county fairgrounds.

There would’ve been roast beef, a dance floor, and probably half the county showing up.

Chance wanted something different.

He wanted a wedding at a resort in Cabo San Lucas, with relatives flown down to Mexico.

Neither he nor Brandy could afford it.

Dad covered the difference.

He took $31,000 from a business line of credit secured by the gas station.

I knew because I handled the books. Every month, I watched the interest payment come out of the station’s operating account.

I didn’t attend the wedding.

Somebody needed to keep the pumps running.

Mom showed me pictures afterward, including one of Chance standing on a beach in a white linen shirt, holding a drink with a little umbrella.

She said it had been the happiest week of his life.

I hoped it was worth the money.

In spring 2023, Chance and Brandy separated.

His first attorney recommended selling their house and splitting the proceeds fairly.

Chance didn’t like that advice.

He fired her.

Dad borrowed another $18,000 against the station to cover the legal bills.

The following spring, Chance hired a second divorce attorney from Kearney. This one had his photograph on a billboard along the interstate.

Dad drew another $24,000 from the business credit line.

I remember standing in the office with that statement in my hand.

“Dad, we’re almost at the limit.”

He kept reading his newspaper.

“If the bank calls this loan, the station’s the collateral.”

“I know how my bank works, Ian.”

“I’m just trying to make sure you understand the risk.”

He lowered the newspaper.

“It’s my station.”

That was the end of the conversation.

In the fall of 2024, the bank sent a notice that the line of credit wouldn’t be renewed.

Between the remaining fuel-tank financing and the additional borrowing, the balance had climbed above $230,000.

They wanted repayment by the end of January.

Dad didn’t tell me until December.

He was standing beside the coffee machine, looking out at the pumps.

“They want it all,” he said.

“Can you refinance?”

“Tried two banks. Nobody wants to touch the place.”

He told me the lenders were worried about the underground tanks.

Those tanks weren’t even ten years old. They were double-walled, properly inspected, and I had every inspection report filed in binders.

Dad hadn’t taken those records to the banks.

He didn’t know where they were.

I did.

But by then, he’d already decided the situation was hopeless.

In March 2025, the bank foreclosed.

A lawyer read the notice outside the courthouse, and the property went back to the lender when nobody bid against it.

That afternoon, somebody came to the station and put plastic bags over the pump handles.

I watched from across the street.

Dad stood beside me in the grocery store parking lot.

He didn’t say a word.

The red letters on the sign were still visible above the canopy.

The place looked exactly as it had that morning, except nobody could buy gasoline anymore.

For the first time in twelve years, I didn’t have a station to open the next day.

Dad started collecting Social Security early. Mom picked up extra shifts at the deli counter.

I got a temporary job changing tractor tires at the co-op.

And I waited.

In May, the bank listed the station for sale through sealed bids.

A couple of out-of-town buyers looked at it, but an older gas station made them nervous.

They didn’t know the condition of the tanks or the service equipment.

I knew every inch of that place.

So I went to the small bank downtown and met with Mr. Pospasil, a loan officer who’d known me since I opened my first checking account at sixteen.

I brought twelve years of records.

Fuel deliveries, payroll, maintenance expenses, environmental inspections, and the monthly sales reports I’d kept myself.

Mr. Pospasil spent nearly an hour looking through the binders.

Finally, he asked, “Who prepared these?”

“I did.”

“All of them?”

“Since I was twenty.”

He closed the last binder.

“Well, then. You know what you’re buying.”

He helped arrange financing.

I put $36,000 down from the account I’d labeled My own shop and submitted a bid of $240,000.

My offer won.

I closed on June 13.