The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

BOOK: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
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This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and the H
OUSE
colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING
-
IN
-
PUBLICATION DATA

Flagg, Fannie.

The all-girl filling station’s last reunion : a novel / Fannie Flagg.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4000-6594-3
eBook ISBN 978-0-8129-9463-6

1. Women—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Family secrets—Fiction.

4. Service stations—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3556.L26A45 2013 813′.54—dc23 2013030030

www.atrandom.com

Jacket illustration: Wendell Minor

v3.1

Contents
PULASKI, WISCONSIN

J
UNE
28, 2010

A few years ago, if someone had told me that

I would be at this reunion today,

I wouldn’t have believed them in

a million years.… And yet, here I am!

—M
RS
. E
ARLE
P
OOLE
, J
R
.

Prologue
THE BEGINNING

L
WÓW
, P
OLAND

A
PRIL
1, 1909

I
N THE YEAR
1908, S
TANISLAW
L
UDIC
J
URDABRALINSKI
,
A TALL
,
RAWBONED
boy of fourteen, was facing a future of uncertainty. Life in Poland under Russian rule was bleak and dangerous. Polish men and boys were being conscripted to serve in the czar’s army, and in an attempt to destroy Polish unity, Catholics and priests had been jailed for anti-Russian sentiments. Churches were shut down and Stanislaw’s father and three uncles had been sent to prison camps for speaking out.

But with encouragement from his older brother Wencent, who had escaped Poland five years earlier, Stanislaw arrived in New York with nothing but the ill-fitting plaid woolen suit he was wearing, a photograph of his mother and sisters, and the promise of a job. With the help of a Polish stevedore who he had befriended on the ship, he managed to hop a freight train.

Five days later, Stanislaw arrived on his brother’s doorstep in Chicago, excited and ready to begin his brand-new life. He had been told that in America, if you worked hard, anything was possible.

A MOST UNUSUAL WEEK

P
OINT
C
LEAR
, A
LABAMA

M
ONDAY
, J
UNE
6, 2005

76°
AND
S
UNNY

M
RS
. E
ARLE
P
OOLE
, J
R
.,
BETTER KNOWN TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY AS
Sookie, was driving home from the Birds-R-Us store out on Highway 98 with one ten-pound bag of sunflower seeds and one ten-pound bag of wild bird seed and not her usual weekly purchase for the past fifteen years of one twenty-pound bag of the Pretty Boy Wild Bird Seed and Sunflower Mix. As she had explained to Mr. Nadleshaft, she was worried that the smaller birds were still not getting enough to eat. Every morning lately, the minute she filled her feeders, the larger, more aggressive blue jays would swoop in and scare the little birds all away.

She noticed that the blue jays always ate the sunflower seeds first, and so tomorrow, she was going to try putting just plain sunflower seeds in her backyard feeders, and while the blue jays were busy eating them, she would run around the house as fast as she could and put the wild bird seed in the feeders in the front yard. That way, her poor finches and titmice might be able to get a little something, at least.

A
S SHE DROVE OVER
the Mobile Bay Bridge, she looked out at the big white puffy clouds and saw a long row of pelicans flying low over the
water. The bay was sparkling in the bright sun and already dotted with red, white, and blue sailboats headed out for the day. A few people fishing alongside the bridge waved as she passed by, and she smiled and waved back. She was almost to the other side when she suddenly began to experience some sort of a vague and unusual sense of well-being. And with good reason.

BOOK: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
12.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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