Gas Station Food

     When you live in a city and think of gas station food you think, pizzas, "cappuccino", over sized jar of over sized pickles, egg salad sandwiches made somewhere else sealed in a plastic box.  But as you travel down the four lane highway and turn off on the two lane County Road, you find gas station food of a different sort. Not really gas stations though, but fillin' stations. These fillin' stations are vanishing from our country roads so if you see one, stop. These country stores sell breakfast for men, and women, who work with their hands. They sell lunch that will keep you working strait through the afternoon to supper. Fried chicken, biscuits, bacon, sausage, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches fill the counters at various times during the day,and season. At the register you might find the big jar of pickles along with pickled eggs and pig feet.
      A few stations might still sell white clay, or chalk, in small plastic sandwich bags.  Why are these small bags of clay there? Well, some people eat white clay. This practice dates back, way back. Country folk, and some from the city, believed that eating this white clay will give them the calcium and other minerals that their body lacks. A woman who worked for my grandmother kept some in her pocket-book for that very reason.  I have tried white clay. It tastes like white clay.
     My dad introduced me to fillin' station food. We'd stop at the fillin' station/bait shop, or bait shop/fillin' station, and pick up our supplies for a Saturday fishing trip. He would get a can of hot tamales (not the candy), and, Vienna sausages for me. Our drinks would come from the old reach-in cooler. The Coca-Cola ones where you'd slide back the top and reach in to the cool darkness. You would linger longer on hot days enjoying your head buried in the coolness. The multi-colored bottle caps would reveal your choices. Red caps, Coke; green, Sprite; orange and purple, Fanta; pink, Tab. I would choose either orange or purple. With our snacks and drinks in a paper sack, off we'd go.
     Around Christmas time this year, my son's class went on a field trip to a Christmas tree farm in Elmore County. The trek out there left the Blazer low on gas so as we pulled away from the farm, I prayed the old fillin' station I saw at the turn was not too far away. We rolled up to the pump just in time. The pump was an old one with the nozzle on the side and the gallon/price dials had numbers that would flip past as you pumped. No swipe and pump here. Which was good, 'cause that meant the kids and I got to go inside. Rows of candy, drinks like Sun Drop, and, Fanta flavors you only dream about. And food made right there. As we paid for gas and the kids treats, Mae chose a chocolate sundae flavored Pop Tart and Buzz picked blue Bug Juice, I spied one lone biscuit probably left from the morning "rush". It was big, wrapped in wax paper, and through a fold in the paper, a hunk of previously melted cheese and corner of biscuit stuck out. A few hours earlier and I would have bought that biscuit.
     As we walked back to the car I noticed a table with pansies for sale. There was a older lady looking them over and she was wearing what looked to be her "yard work clothes", polyester pants with coordinating pale floral blouse, comfortable shoes. She was contemplating each flat and in her minds eye planting them in the flower pots around her door step or the bed around the mail box. I guess the fillin' station on Weoka Road is a fillin' station/nursery.