Gas Stations of Greater Appalachia
Emily Blair writes a column for Boshemia about queer culture in Appalachia and the American South. You can read more by Emily here.
As I write this, there’s a gas shortage in North Carolina. Maybe you’ve heard about it. A pipeline hack led to panic buying and hoarding. Tonight, someone tweeted that 78% of gas stations in North Carolina are out of gas, the worst of any state right now. We’re a lot of things, North Carolinians, but smart in a panic isn’t one of them. I wonder why that is.
I’m relatively new here, so don’t think I’m qualified to give an informed opinion of the state. I moved to North Carolina in August of 2017, chasing the dream of teaching college English. I spent two years in Kentucky before that – or barely Kentucky, Louisville, across the river from Indiana. Not many people sounded like me there. I grew up in southwestern Virginia, in the mountains, which people are liable to find out when they ask me, sweetly, where I am from, when I use a word like “liable,” and it has two syllables, and those syllables are long.
Tonight, we went looking for gas. One place near I-40 had long lines snaking back into the four-lane road. We were six cars back when the attendants came out shaking their heads and big yellow bags to cover the pumps. Too late. I turned toward the other exit, taking a two-lane road that wound by outdoor rental units, trailer parks, dumpster storage facilities, and a mysterious hot dog stand. We’re still in Buncombe County, but twenty-five minutes from Asheville, it feels a world away from the million-dollar homes and $2000/month one-bedroom apartments there. It reminds me of home.
I whipped into a gas station with short lines and people pumping. On the edge of the parking lot, a sign for a Baptist church read: HE WASN’T DEAD LONG AND HE WON’T BE GONE LONG. I enjoy this revision of the genteel Methodist He Is Risen lawn signs that dot our neighborhood. Across the street was another gas station, where I’ve bought cigarettes before. Both these places are unaffiliated with corporations – they’re not BP or Shell or Exxon or Sheetz or anything else. The floors are always sloping poured concrete. The signs are hand lettered. The pumps, here, were flip-up to start. Inside, we prepaid for gas, a $20 limit per customer. Maybe two other people in line out of the ten had masks. The hold up in line wasn’t for gas, though, what people around here have been howling for. A kid, very clearly a kid, was trying to pass off a fake ID to buy beers. The man at the register waived him off to get through the line (but eventually relented – the kid made a good case, a lost ID, a picture from when he got his learner’s permit, not too pushy, and he got two tall boys without much work. I was proud of his patience).
I’ve been in this gas station before. Not literally, but I’ve been in dozens of these gas stations. I used to lay in the tanning bed in the back of one, 30 lays for $20 a month between Fort Chiswell and Austinville, back home, with two pumps in the front. The woman at the register would mark your lays in a big white binder, her nails perfect and long. Near Wirtz, Virginia, a gas station just like this flew a Trump flag in summer 2018, and my now-spouse refused to get out of the car while I peed on our way to a wedding. In Black Mountain, North Carolina, when a wreck backed up I-40 for ten miles, I popped into one for a Coke, and the men called me sweetheart, asking if I was coming in for vacation.
My accent is back. After two years in Louisville and three around Charlotte, I felt I had nearly lost it. But these gas stations remind me that I haven’t lost anything in any way that matters. I know better than to get a chocolate bar from a place with window unit air conditioning in the summer, from my childhood disappointment at the melted and hardened wads of chocolate from Robin’s Git-N-Go in Ivanhoe. I know the energy drinks are overpriced. I know they’ll make a big deal over me not looking my age when I buy anything. I know to smile. I know to watch my step on the way out, that sloping concrete tricky in the rain. I know that you greet the cashier smoking out front as you walk in before she follows you inside and waits, impatiently, for you to make a purchase.
These are not interstate gas stations, and I realize, in writing this, how many people may have never been in this kind of gas station. I don’t remember any like this in my college town of Blacksburg, Virginia, although I’m sure I might be wrong. We bought 40s of malt liquor and Swisher Sweets from the 7/11 just off campus, and drunken taquitos, too. I don’t remember any gas stations like this in Louisville, although the liquor stores in my neighborhood filled the void, minus the gas. My friends have moved to cities and sold their cars, or never had them at all.
There’s something about a tiny rural gas station, lit up in neon, that makes me feel at home in the world again. I know how to walk into this gas station. I know where to find things, even if I’ve never been here before. And I’m back again.