#The gas station

[theindescribable1]

I found a horror movie sticker pack while at The Gas Station. Not A gas station, THE gas station. Here in TX, right near where I live, theres a Bbq selling gas station filled with things from horror movies. Its supposed to be after the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre! It might be one of a kind, I haven't seen it anywhere else, but it isn't even a gas station, it sells BBQ and horror movie items as well as T-shirts! Its and exact replica of the one from the movie, but the one in the movie. . .the Bbq is made out of humans. ANYWAY! I bought these;

Lovely, right guys?

[townofcadence]

The Gas Station

This Gas station stands on an overlook that curves over the edge of Cadence. The pumps are long since missing, the inside of the store barren, leaving it a husk silhouetted on the eastern side of town in the twilight hours. It stands abandoned-- twenty years ago, six workers who had been hired to renovate the station disappeared, vanishing into thin air as they left the site inside a pickup truck. Several came forward claiming to witness the disappearance, and with a prior track record of other minor disappearances centered around the station, often written up as someone leaving town, the publicity was enough to end the gas station before the renovations ever came near completion.

Due to the costs of fixing the station to make it operable, it hadn't been purchased and replaced by a different company. The further into disrepair time dragged it, the more obvious it was it'd stay abandoned. Stories still circled it, disappearances still cropped up, though nothing as huge or as widely circulated as the pickup six. Kids and teenagers growing up in Cadence might visit the station as part of scary experiences, or privacy away from parents, but the cyclic nature of a vanishing would keep them away periods as well, and most knew better than to mess around too much, with the stories that were shared about it.

The last vanishing was seven or so years ago, a trio of paranormal investigators who went to explore and elaborate on what may have happened to the pickup six. They never came home, though like many others, at least a few hold out hope on seeing those who are missing again.

[famousfor15]

Me with John Dugan (Grandpa), Teri McMinn (Pam), and Allen Danziger (Jerry) from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

[unknownn-girl]

[hneymoonvio]

literally me credits: @unknownn-girl 💗

[mapsontheweb]

Parts of the country where self-service gas pumping is illegal.

[strawberriesandmist]

Everyone from home says that you’re so cool, c’mon everybody to the boarding school

[lanaaareydel]

this is shit.

[hoofpeet]

//

[poem-today]

A poem by C. K. Williams

The Gas Station

This is before I'd read Nietzsche. Before Kant or Kierkegaard, even before Whitman and Yeats. I don't think there were three words in my head yet. I knew perhaps, that I should suffer, I can remember I almost cried for this or for that, nothing special, nothing to speak of. Probably I was mad with grief for the loss of my childhood, but I wouldn't have known that. It's dawn. A gas station. Route twenty-two. I remember exactly: route twenty-two curved, there was a squat, striped concrete divider they'd put in after a plague of collisions. The gas station? Texaco, Esso -- I don't know. They were just words anyway then, just what their signs said. I wouldn't have understood the first thing about monopoly or imperialist or oppression. It's dawn. It's so late. Even then, when I was never tired, I'm just holding on. Slumped on my friend's shoulder, I watch the relentless, wordless misery of the route twenty-two sky that seems to be filming my face with a grainy oil I keep trying to rub off or in. Why are we here? Because one of my friends, in the men's room over there, has blue balls. He has to jerk off. I don't know what that means, "blue balls," or why he has to do that— It must be important to have to stop here after this long night, but I don't ask. I'm just trying, I think, to keep my head as empty as I can for as long as I can. One of my other friends is asleep. He's so ugly, his mouth hanging, slack and wet. Another -- I'll never see this one again -- stares from the window as though he were frightened. Here's what we've done. We were in Times Square, a pimp found us, corralled us, led us somewhere, down a dark street, another dark street, up dark stairs, dark hall, dark apartment, where his whore, his girl, or his wife or his mother for all I know dragged herself from her sleep, propped herself on an elbow, gazed into the dark hall, and agreed, for two dollars each, to take care of us. Take care of us. Some of the words that come through me now seem to stay, to hook in. My friend in the bathroom is taking so long. The filthy sky must be starting to lighten. It took me a long time, too, with the woman, I mean. Did I mention that she, the woman, the whore or the mother, was having her time and all she would deign to do was to blow us? Did I say that? Deign? Blow? What a joy, though, the idea was in those days. Blown! What a thing to tell the next day. She only deigned, though, no more. She was like a machine. When I lift her back to me now, there's nothing there but that dark, curly head, working, a machine, up and down, and now, Freud, Marx, Fathers, tell me, what am I, doing this, telling this, on her, on myself, hammering it down, cementing it, sealing it in, but a machine, too? Why am I doing this? I still haven't read Augustine. I don't understand Chomsky that well. Should I? My friend at last comes back. Maybe the right words were there all along. Complicity. Wonder. How pure we were then, before Rimbaud, before Blake. Grace. Love. Take care of us. Please.

C. K. Williams (1936-2015)

[70sscifiart]

The late-night gas station run, in science fiction and fantasy

[inbabylontheywept]

she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parent’s driveway. 

after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which we’d unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.

(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)

anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me. 

now, i’d seen her work up the nerve to do things like this before – it could take quite a while. and knowing it was about to happen made the waiting immediately unbearable. 

so i said hey. 

and she looked at me, very startled, and said hey back real small. like she’d been caught. and in a way, i suppose she had. 

and i said it’s okay. you can just say it. i’ll be okay.

i’m always okay. 

and she said: i’m really sorry. 

i loved her, you know? it was highschool, but teenagers are capable of love. the way people love changes over time just as much as the way they stand, or the way they talk, but things don’t stop existing just because they're different. opposite really – a thing only stops changing when it's fully gone.

and i said, nothing to be sorry for, and i meant it. she looked a little relived, and i was happy to give her that peace. then she left. i watched her make it through the front door, because that was just habit at that point, and then i sat there a while afterwards, checking how i felt. and the answer was not good, but good enough to make it home. good enough to limp on. 

so i put my car in reverse, took my last look goodbye, and immediately backed into her neighbor’s car. 

crunch. 

air bags didn't go off, which was good. i left a decent dent in the bumper of the other car. genuinely couldn’t tell if i did anything to my car – anything wrong with it just kind of blended together into the general ecosystem of hand mottled, sun cracked, chickenshit spackle. 

i checked my glove box, and my car insurance info was, of course, out of date. my phone was dead too. as a teenager, my phone was less my lifeline to my friends, and more my tether to my parents, so i wasn’t particularly conscious of keeping it charged. both my fault.

i sat there a few minutes, trying to think of the best way to handle things, and there was only one answer i could think of, and i hated that answer, so i spent a few more minutes trying and failing to think of a better one, and then a few more coming to peace with what had to be done. 

then i went back to knock on my now ex’s front door. 

her dad opened, which i was very relieved over, even if he seemed less than thrilled. he looked me over, and in a firm, but slightly apologetic way said: she does not want to see you right now. 

(i think he assumed i was going to try and talk her out of the break up?)

and i said not here for her. i just backed into your neighbor’s car, and i need to call my dad, but my phone’s dead. could i borrow yours?

and he looked at me, then back at his neighbors car, which sure enough was dented, then he looked at the chickenshitmobile, and if there was something wrong with it, it just kind of blended into the general Wrongness of the car, then back to me, and i could see him imagining the last ten minutes from my pov: getting broken up with, backing into a car, having to walk up to your exes door and borrow a phone, calling my dad to tell him that i just reversed into someone.  

and his expression shifted from stern and apologetic to truly sad, which felt more kind that i deserved. things only got here because i kept fucking up - forgot to look behind me, forgot to replace the insurance forms, forgot to charge my phone. it was my mess, but his sympathy meant the world to me. i probably would’ve cried if he said sorry, or patted me on the back or called me sport, but instead he said

stay out here – i’ll bring you a phone.

and then he left.  

i found a nice spot on the lawn in the shade under a sycamore, then settled into his grass.i was trying not to freak out, and was doing an okay job. he came out a minute or so later, not just with a phone, but a juicebox and a jar of green olives, which really threw a wrench in the whole try not to cry thing. soon as i saw those, a few tears squoze out. i was still hoping i could pass them off as Manly Tears but then he told me that he’d gotten the olives a few weeks before and had been meaning to hand them off to me, and that this was his last chance for that. then i made a sound like a horse drowning in a bog, and he patted my back pretty rough, four solid thumps, like he wasn't sure if i was crying or choking on an olive, and was trying to cover both bases at once.

then he went back inside, and i made a few more bog horse noises while finishing off the rest of the entire jar of green olives, and then i called my dad.

he was about ten minutes away that day, and luckily was home. he drove over, and we went to the neighbor’s house, and from there things actually went quite nice. the neighbor was a retired man who actually said he could fix the dent himself, no need for insurance. he said he appreciated that i didn't just drive off, and i said i was really sorry about his car, and he said he was really sorry about my car, and then he gestured to the chickenshitmobile and i laughed because it really was a disaster on wheels.

then we left.

i thought we were going to head straight home, but instead we went to a gas station, and we both got several slim jims that we folded into thick enough coils that we could put them on a hotdog bun because the growing up mormon equivalent of having a sad brewski with your dad is just choosing to make bad decisions sober. then he took me to the canals and we watched the sun turn all orange and pink, and he looked over at me and said:

brains are good at remembering bad days. so you gotta make sure that a bad day has a good part in in, so you can remember that too. remember that when you have a kid. try to do a good job on days like that - they're going to be a big part of how they remember you.

and then he gave me a big hug and said he was never going to eat another slim jim again.

---

the year after that i went to college, which kicked my butt in new and exciting ways. and on a lot of those bad days, after a test that went sour, or a faux paus that was particularly embarrassing, or some other hardship of my new adult life, i’d stop by the gas station and pick up leathery, half jerkied hotdog before heading to the canals to watch the sun set. i’d take a bite and imagine my dad next to me, grimacing through the slim-jim wad, asking what good thing i was going use that time to remember. 

and in my head, i’d say you, dad. 

i’m going to remember you.

[famousfor15]

Me with John Dugan (Grandpa), Teri McMinn (Pam), and Allen Danziger (Jerry) from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

[unknownn-girl]

[oh-good]

Well are you ready Ray? ...Ray? Aw fuck guys we forgot him at the gas station again

[urban-shade]

normal activities in sebastians shop