Roadside Museums

A few years ago I came up with a theory that when pulling off the interstate to fuel up you can generally tell a lot about the area you are in by the stuff they sell inside the gas station. These gas stations serve as small cultural museums of their local communities while making a few bucks on the side pedaling fuel, tobacco, and booze. This did not come to me randomly but, rather, while making a pit stop in the middle of nowhere. Also known as Tennessee.

Entering the station, I grabbed a Snicker bar and  made my way to the back to find a small bottle of milk. However, the milk was nearly impossible to find. All but one of the coolers were being used to house what equated to a small warehouse of beer. But not just any brand of beer. While there may have been a few spare six-packs of Corona or Ice House there were cases upon cases upon cases of Busch, Budweiser, and Old Milwaukee.

On my way back to the front I stopped by the magazine rack. Now some gas stations, feeling these publications are ethically or morally wrong,  refuse to sell pornographic magazines. Others place them behind the counter to protect the innocence of young children. This one, however,  put them all - and there were many - right next to the multiple car and truck magazines and just above the single copy of Newsweek. I want to believe that Newsweek was such a hot item that they had trouble keeping them in stock. I want to believe it, but I don't.

After making my way past the assortment of fishing hats - my favorite sporting two large Styrofoam breasts protruding from the front - I finally reached the counter. Standing in line, I noticed that just beside me, one shelf above the Little Debbie snack cakes, was a box of beer bongs. On my other side was a large washtub full of iced down cans of beer. I can't say for certain that the two were meant to be impulse buys or even to be bought in tandem but, in all honesty, what's the use of one without the other?

I choose to stop just short of saying that the people of small town Tennessee are ignorant, macho alcoholics who, while in a drunken stupor, beat their wives. I choose to believe that all these tell tale signs could be wrong. In fact, they have to be wrong because just the other day I decided to take a closer to look at our own gas station. The one we always use to fill up our cars. The one with the faded sign out front that reads:

POPS
  POPS
    POPS

On the entry door was a handwritten sign, barely legible, that read "We WILL prosecute anyone caught stealing ANYTHING from this station!" It wasn't written as though they were hoping people wouldn't start stealing from them but rather as though people regularly did. I suddenly felt a need to keep my hands out of my pockets.

The three people in front of me in line were all buying scratch off lottery tickets and cigarettes. Nothing else. Just lottery tickets and cigarettes. For what may have been the first time in my four years as a customer of this station I turned around, against my better judgment, to look around the store and see what they sold.

And that's when it hit me.

Either my theory is all wrong or my neighbors are a bunch of lazy black-lunged convicts puffing themselves toward certain deaths but on too much of a sugar high from their Moon Pie addictions to even notice. Being that I hate being wrong I'm left with just one option. I'm now taking the longer route to everywhere. The one with the yuppie Circle K that sells designer coffees and has faux-wood floors.

I feel like a better person already.