Fuel pump apparition has Buckfield buzzing
By Roberta Scruggs
Staff Writer
Phil McAlister Jr. looked at his boss with a grin on his face and just the slightest hint of worry in his voice.
“Do you see it?” he asked Sandy Thompson, co-owner of the Buckfield Mall on Route 117.
Thompson stared hard at the convenience store’s diesel pump Friday evening, but she clearly wasn’t seeing anything special.
“Look on the silver part,” McAlister urged. “Just the silver.”
Suddenly Thompson’s expression changed to one of enlightenment.
“OK, now I see it,” she said. “I don’t know what I was expecting. But yes. OK.”
McAlister breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.
“It’s just the neatest thing,” he said. “It’s silly, but it’s neat.”
The first indication of the unusual visual phenomena at this “mini, mini, mini mall” came a few weeks ago, McAlister said.
A woman, who he couldn’t identify, came into the store and asked, “Did you guys do that on purpose?”
McAlister, who’s worked at the mall on Route 117 for two years, didn’t know what to answer. He’d been off for two days. Maybe, he thought, something had happened during his absence.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“That buck on your gas tank there,” she replied.
Still puzzled, McAlister followed her out of the store. She pointed toward the diesel pump, saying, “It’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
On the shiny lower section of the diesel pump, McAlister saw the distinct image of a buck, which also happens to be the mascot of the athletic teams at Buckfield Junior-Senior High School.
“I said, ‘Oh, my God, I never noticed it before.’ But it’s just as clear. It looks like a painting almost,” McAlister said.
The image appears as darkness falls, he said. It can be seen best by someone standing beside the gas pumps, on the side closest to the store’s entrance. First the outline becomes visible, then the nose and eyes slowly fill in.
“It’s there every night,” McAlister said. “As soon as it gets dark you can see it just as clear as a bell.”
Walk up close, though, and the buck vanishes. The only thing to be seen on the diesel pump is the dent made last year when a truck backed into it.
McAlister knows the buck is just an illusion produced by the reflection of the lights on the canopy over the pump. But it’s still quite a sight, he said.
“I want everybody else to see it,” he said. “So people won’t think I’m nuts.”
His co-worker, Olive Burnham, said she can see the buck clearly and that word of the illusion is starting to get around town.
“People come in just to see it,” Burnham said.
But Cathy Jack, who was working with him Friday night, had her doubts, saying McAlister is known for his jokes.
When he saw her glancing out the store’s window, he asked, “Can you see it?”
Jack shook her head.
“I was looking for customers,” she said. “I did see a dent.”
But after 8 p.m., as it got darker and darker, something began to materialize on the diesel pump. Some said it looked like the head of a white mule, others said a kangaroo.
“It looks like a donkey to me,” Jack said.
Then she patted McAlister on the arm.
“Don’t worry,” she joked. “We’ll have him looked at.”
But McAlister just laughed. He didn’t mind what animal they saw on the pump as long as they saw something.
“It’s a funny, amazing kind of thing,” he said. “You’ve got to see it to believe it.”