You know what I miss?
Dirty truckstops.
I mean the kind with bathrooms so foul you wonder if you’ll get a venereal disease just walking through it. The kind with the novelty condom dispensers. The sort of truck stops that have glory holes carved through the wood dividers for the stalls.
If you don’t know what a glory hole is, I am not going to be the one to tell you about it.
Anyway, I kinda miss them. Not the glory holes, but the dirty truck stops. Over this last year and some I have had the opportunity to drive a lot between Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. And, in the back-and-forth between those cities I have topped at just about every place you can stop.
They’re all very clean and neat.
It’s quite the let down, really. As a kid my mother hauled us back and forth between Minneapolis and Peoria. So much so, that to this day I have that route memorized. And, let me tell you, some of those stops were barely more than a shack with a pit dug out to store the gas in the middle of a flat spot covered in gravel. They were the sort of places where you wondered if the 18 wheeler idling on the edge of the lot had a dismembered hooker in the sleeper or if the driver was just tweeking on meth; and the dishwater blonde behind the counter that was missing half her teeth and called everyone Hon.
I mean, those road trips had character. They had danger! You had to gauge if you could hold it a little while longer, or if thought of peeing your pants had finally become a fate worse than death. Those Truck Stops had racks and racks of porn mags with unshaven men with intense and downcast eyes that jingled the change in their pockets at a furious pace. And, you had to guess how long you could tarry over the covers before mom caught you. And the food? Yeah, you didn’t want that burrito. Under any circumstances. But, damn, if it didn’t look like the best thing you could ever have at 2 in the morning.
That’s excitement you just can’t find in the brightly lit Loves Truck Stops, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, or other Road Super Stops. Now they sell family friendly dvd’s, energy drinks, and franchised fast food. The porn mags are safely wrapped in their blue bags and behind the counter. The Novelty condom dispensers have been replaced by Koala Diaper stations.
The mystique of the Road Trip has been well lit, neatly packaged, and sanitized for your satisfaction. We have lost something, I think, in the corporatization of America. In the endless asphalt ribbon one place has become just like any other. There is less of a reason to stop and look around because the Racetrack in Texas will be like the Loves in Kansas and like the Super America in Minnesota.
So, in the journey of your life if you find one of those dying breeds of truck stops, one of these pearls in the slop, stop and check out the porn. Maybe buy the burrito.
But, I still wouldn’t eat it.
Dirty truckstops.
I mean the kind with bathrooms so foul you wonder if you’ll get a venereal disease just walking through it. The kind with the novelty condom dispensers. The sort of truck stops that have glory holes carved through the wood dividers for the stalls.
If you don’t know what a glory hole is, I am not going to be the one to tell you about it.
Anyway, I kinda miss them. Not the glory holes, but the dirty truck stops. Over this last year and some I have had the opportunity to drive a lot between Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. And, in the back-and-forth between those cities I have topped at just about every place you can stop.
They’re all very clean and neat.
It’s quite the let down, really. As a kid my mother hauled us back and forth between Minneapolis and Peoria. So much so, that to this day I have that route memorized. And, let me tell you, some of those stops were barely more than a shack with a pit dug out to store the gas in the middle of a flat spot covered in gravel. They were the sort of places where you wondered if the 18 wheeler idling on the edge of the lot had a dismembered hooker in the sleeper or if the driver was just tweeking on meth; and the dishwater blonde behind the counter that was missing half her teeth and called everyone Hon.
I mean, those road trips had character. They had danger! You had to gauge if you could hold it a little while longer, or if thought of peeing your pants had finally become a fate worse than death. Those Truck Stops had racks and racks of porn mags with unshaven men with intense and downcast eyes that jingled the change in their pockets at a furious pace. And, you had to guess how long you could tarry over the covers before mom caught you. And the food? Yeah, you didn’t want that burrito. Under any circumstances. But, damn, if it didn’t look like the best thing you could ever have at 2 in the morning.
That’s excitement you just can’t find in the brightly lit Loves Truck Stops, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, or other Road Super Stops. Now they sell family friendly dvd’s, energy drinks, and franchised fast food. The porn mags are safely wrapped in their blue bags and behind the counter. The Novelty condom dispensers have been replaced by Koala Diaper stations.
The mystique of the Road Trip has been well lit, neatly packaged, and sanitized for your satisfaction. We have lost something, I think, in the corporatization of America. In the endless asphalt ribbon one place has become just like any other. There is less of a reason to stop and look around because the Racetrack in Texas will be like the Loves in Kansas and like the Super America in Minnesota.
So, in the journey of your life if you find one of those dying breeds of truck stops, one of these pearls in the slop, stop and check out the porn. Maybe buy the burrito.
But, I still wouldn’t eat it.
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