When I left my home state of West Virginia at the age of 23, I hadn't accomplished much of anything.  I was a two-time college dropout and a beer-swilling redneck in denial.  I was up to my Electric Light Orchestra afro in confusion and desperation because of the rapidly unraveling, six-year relationship with my first girlfriend.  And, on top of it all, I was still living with my parents and earning the emasculating sum of $3.50 an hour working the overnight shift in a convenience store/gas station at the foot of an interstate exit ramp.

During most of my final six months in the Mountain State I was hopeless and absolutely certain something bad was about to happen.  I felt doomed and was quickly losing my grip.  I secretly schemed to run away from all my problems, and head to the West Virginia version of the land of dreams:  North Carolina.  But, before I got the hell out of there, I witnessed a real-life illustration of all that I had become.  I think of it now as my own personal gas station epiphany.  For six months I was Scrooge with a squeegee, there among my coworkers (my professional colleagues, my peers) -- the most amazing menagerie of misfits and small-time criminals I've ever been associated with.

The owner/manager of the convenience store had two sons that worked there, and a wife that co-managed and did the books.  It was a modern-day Mom and Pop grocery, but it was no small-time operation.  It was a high-volume, brightly lit filling station and convenience store that served the many road-stoned travelers who used the freeway that ran through the middle of town.  I worked at night with another highly trained cash register engineer, from eleven PM to seven AM.  I expertly managed the gas pumps from an elaborate control panel behind the counter, I filled complicated cigarette orders from the overhead pack-dispenser with the precision of a chemist, and I made change to people too stupid to appreciate my obvious talents.  And each week Mom would smile and hand me (the genius) a check for one hundred and three dollars.

None of my colleagues seemed to share my feelings of despair.  In fact, they all seemed perfectly happy with the situation.  I quickly dismissed them as dumbass wood-hicks.  It wasn't until alter that I learned they were stealing as much stuff as they could carry, and using the place as a bordello and ongoing party site.  They were running scams on the customers, committing acts of violence and vandalism, and smoking huge bags of weed while on the clock.  It's no mystery now why they seemed so content:  they had found their dream job!

I eventually began to admire their energy and inventiveness, and started to join in on the fun.  It didn't take long before I began to appreciate .38 Special, and to see the beauty in a freshly-waxed bigfoot truck at dusk.  I mean, these guys were alive!  And I quickly became a pillar in their little community.  It's scary how fast I fell into step, and how easily I was accepted.

Although it wasn't in the employee handbook, everything that was sold in the store was absolutely free to the staff.  It wasn't something you wanted to flaunt in front of Mom and Pop, but it probably would've been OK if you did.  We consumed candy bars and sodas like World War II had just ended.  We devoured bags of chips like each bag was an individual chip.  We drank quarts of beef from white Styrofoam cups while flipping through the latest issue of Penthouse and the Hustler Horny Amputee Special Edition.  Before I knew it, I was in a frenzy of convenience store excess.  I even briefly considered taking up smoking so I could take full advantage of every theft opportunity available to me.

Mom and Pop seemed oblivious to it all.  Their semiannual inventories must've been a fiasco ("How could this be?  A million dollars short in Frito-Lay products alone?!"), but nothing was ever said about it that I'm aware of.  Their own sons were two of the biggest offenders, so that may have had something to do with it.  Maybe they didn't want to know what they would find if they started looking.  The sons would routinely load cases of beer into their matching Camaros and screech away with various and sundry camouflage-covered hoodlums hanging out of their windows, hooting and hollering.  (I found it ironic that they drew so much attention to themselves while wearing camouflage, but I never

                                                                        continue>>