Growing up in Mississippi, the only place Kate Medley could get Indian food was from a BP station. The owner of the station was Indian, and every morning he’d arrive with Tupperware containers filled with the food his wife had made that morning. If you knew, you knew to ask what they were serving that day. They had a microwave, they had some tables. You could heat it up and eat it there or you could take it on your way.
Grown now and living in Durham, North Carolina, Medley is a photojournalist. But she still thinks about gas stations. Her book Thank You, Please Come Again explores the complexities of the independent gas stations throughout the American South. The project took her 10 years and covers 11 states.
In the book’s introduction, Medley writes, “Our politics may be polarized, our economics stratified, our neighborhoods segregated, and our rhetoric strained, but still nearly everyone regularly passes through these same commercial spaces. We fill up the tank. We relieve our bladders. We grab a cold one on the way home from work. We take advantage of Friday night’s ‘prime rib special.’ We may rub elbows as we pass the ketchup. In an increasingly atomized world of mediated interactions, we have fewer and fewer communal spaces that unite us.”
From saag paneer in Hammond, Louisiana, to bahn mi out of a Texaco, Medley explores what America means through our roadways and our foodways.
Far from the monolithic spaces of corporate capitalism, gas stations are as complex as the country itself. The National Association of Convenience Stores reports that there are 147,000 gas stations in the US. Of those, 127,888 are convenience stores that also sell gas. And 60 percent are owned and run by an individual family. In rural areas where it’s hard to get to a grocery store, gas stations become both restaurant and supermarket. In a country of vast spaces stitched together by streams of concrete, gas stations are indispensable places of culture, communion, and creativity.
Through Medley’s lens, we see the commonality of passing through – what is permanent and what gets in its car and drives away. We see the assertions of identity through food and decor and the negotiations with surrounding places and cultures. A salsa taqueria with chicken strips on the menu. As a result, of the growing number of Punjabi’s who are working as truck drivers dhabas — roadside restaurants — are popping up in gas stations and convenience stores across the country. Medley photographed one in in Louisiana that is situated right at the intersection of I-55 and I-12. She also photographs Senegalese places in the backs of gas stations in North Carolina where you can get jollof rice and a hamburger.
In that way, gas stations are monuments to the ever-changing nature of this country — the compromises and negotiations, identities, and snacks. They are our little churches of commerce and community. And in that way they are beautiful.
These negotiations of place and culture through food at roadway stops are quiet conversations. Medley told me in an interview that she rarely saw any overtly political messages. Well, except for the large “Let’s Go Brandon” flag over the coffee pot at a convenience store in the Florida Panhandle. But for the most part, these are not loud fights. For example, she told me about Peter Nguyen, who opened a standalone banh mi restaurant near his parents’ Texaco station, because “rich people don’t eat in gas stations.” His Banh Mi Boys has been a success. But the choice to be near, but not in, the gas station, is part of a constant dialogue of capitalism, class, race, and culture happening in these roadway stops.
So much is subtext. Medley tells me that walking through the door of each place (and she estimates she photographed at least 150 gas stations places), she was constantly evaluating gender, age, class, race and so much more, noting:
“As you walk in, you read whatever signages out front, you walk in, you open that glass door– will there be little jingles? And what will you find? Will you be welcomed? Will you feel in danger? Will it be hospitable? Are you walking into a MAGA South? Are you walking into a welcoming South? A lot of this, to me, is a microcosm of the South overall and the long history of this place. I feel like there's so much to discover about each community by walking into these places and seeing who's behind the register and who's working the grill, who's drinking coffee, what's on the community bowls and boards, what are the local foods that are for sale? Who made the pound cake that's sold by the slice and Saran Wrap at the cash register?”
It’s here, Medley believes, not in the halls of Congress, that America is truly deciding who and what it will be.
The singer Joe Pug recently wrote in his own newsletter about gas stations, calling them the new cathedrals. He’s not kidding, he writes: “My affection is not tongue in cheek. It is not ironic. And I’m not joking when I say that Bucee’s is the answer to my nagging question. Where did our energy go when it drifted away from industry and worship? It went into consumption. Constant consumption. Every culture builds its monuments, whether consciously or not. We leave behind artifacts that reveal our highest conceivable values. The places we spend most of our time, money and attention become our monuments.”
I have thought a lot about gas stations ever since I wrote my book God Land. Traveling through the Midwest in 2017 while my life was falling apart and America was politically tearing itself apart. Often, these were the only places to find something that resembled a vegetable on my long, lonely drives to Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nebraska. They seemed to embody both permanence and impermanence. They were a stop for travelers and essential to the local community. It seemed inconsequential that I, just another traveler, was there. But it also seemed important for me to be there, that my presence and the money spent sustained the existence of the place.
In that way, gas stations are monuments to the ever-changing nature of this country — the compromises and negotiations, identities, and snacks. They are our little churches of commerce and community. And in that way they are beautiful.
Medley shared some images from the book for this newsletter. And one image — the picture of the “Let’s Go Brandon” sign in Florida — that is not in the book.
In each, she captures the beauty of these pass-through places.
You can also read a forward to the book written by Kiese Laymon on The Bitter Southerner website.
Last year I was driving late at night through St. Marys, Ohio. Stopped for gas and went in for a snack. The cashier is chowing down on one of those little hummus snack cups. “Ever heard of hummus?” he asks. I say I love the stuff. His face lights up. “We just started stocking these and they’re so good!”
For some reason it always puts a smile on my face — the image of this small-town good ol’ boy holding down the late shift and turning his customers on to hummus. Kinda lovely.
Re: gas stations as the new cathedrals: this called to mind for me Joni Mitchell's song "Barangrill," on her album Court and Spark. I grew up on this album, and as a young child, I so easily grasped the mythological nature of the unnamed bar and grill and everything it stood for (or everything the song's narrator hoped it might stand for) that I didn't realize that "Barangrill" was anything but a mythical place. As an adult, I understood the play on words and was able to grasp that the song blurs the ordinary and the mythical, specifically in a place of consumption that nevertheless is a kind of cathedral.