I have visited many a memorable gas station. I have witnessed a wide variety of boiled peanuts flavors. I have purchased a wooden slingshot in the shape of a wolf's head in a glorious gas super-station. I have watched a grown, toothless man giggle while rubbing a debit card across his plump, distended belly.
However, April 11th, 2015 is a day that will live eternally in my gas station memory. On April 11th, I visited an institution that baffled, excited, and perturbed me to my very core. On April 11th, I stopped at a gas station formerly known as Slade's Kountry Korner. What is it named now? Not only do I not know, but I firmly believe that nobody knows. Not the owners, not the members of the community of Hope Hull, Alabama, not a single human, living or dead.
It is my duty, as a dedicated purveyor of fine gas, convenience, and corner stores and, frankly, as a human with respect and compassion for my fellow humans, to tell you about the institution formerly known as Slade's Kountry Korner.
My two traveling companions and I pulled off at the Hope Hull exit in rapturous search of bathroom facilities. We were several hours into our journey and morale was high. Just a short stretch from the meandering interstate, we spotted a curious building. The parking lot was bare, lonesome. The building's facade sported the worn engraving of what once spelled out "Slade's Kountry Korner." A neon "Open" sign suggested that the nameless building was functional and occupied, yet the windows were dark and uninviting. Though the yellow and white lines that once separated parking spots had long since faded, we drove up to the storefront and parked, waiting, debating on how to proceed. Despite our collective uncertainty, I exited the vehicle and pulled the front door handle.
Somehow, it was open.
My travelling companions promptly exited the vehicle. Tentatively, we entered a lobby. A vaulted ceiling rose above us, surrounded by fluorescent skylights. The air was damp, stale, and warm. The room was grey and surgical -- some strange liminal cross between a doctor's office and a Soviet interrogation chamber. To our left, a metal gate framed what could only be a long-abandoned Burger King. Loose wires and dry-rot hung like post-apocalyptic stalactites. A suspicious pool of stagnant liquid had spread across the floor of this ominous chamber of unanswered questions and reached to the lobby. This scene, this wretched scene of fast food neglect, this strange and unprecedented glimpse into the Eighth Wonder of the World, the First Wonder of Alabama, this toxic death-chamber, the Hanging Dry-rot Gardens of Hope Hull, Alabama, was inexplicable. Remains inexplicable.
We entered our respectively gendered bathrooms.
There were two stalls in the female restroom. The furthest from the entrance fittingly sported an "Out of Order" sign, hastily scrawled on brown paper. The closest stall sported no warning, no suggested exercise of caution. However, the stout porcelain commode incited not only fear, but warped curiosity. A lone butt-smudge adorned the seat, a record of a fierce butt-battle of yesteryear.
We did not enter the actual store portion of this institution. We did not dare. We are still unsure as to whether anyone was acting in the capacity of cashier at the front counter. We have only unanswered questions and a lingering and unsettling sense of dread. What could have transpired in this building to constitute such neglect, such disarray? Why and how is this institution still open? Do they generate a profit? What happens to our souls when we die? Several fleeting images of this suburban sarcophagus will remain with me until my dying breath. A chewing tobacco advertisement with the original printed "$1.93" scratched out and "$2.07" scrawled over it in menacing black Sharpie. The metallic wings of a glittering angel sticker for sale within a vending machine, its plate glass buried beneath dust and decay. The serene stillness of that mysterious body of liquid and its fearless proximity to dangling wires. The abstract shape of that dark and foreboding butt-smudge. I do not know what happened within the institution formerly known as Slade's Kountry Korner. I have naught but speculation to offer, surrealist shards of half-formed thoughts and soundless nightmare screams. I will never forget how I felt on that sunny Saturday afternoon. I faced not only my own mortality, but the sick and very real possibilities of the scope of human experience. We left Slade's Kountry Korner, but Slade's will never leave us. The haunting specter of Slade's will find us in our most vulnerable moments of uncertainty and fear. Slade's will illuminate the yet-undetermined paths of all of the most terrible things that will happen to us in the future with the ever-burning fluorescent beacon of knowledge -- knowledge that sometimes, truly horrific things happen without a semblance of explanation. read more