On our way to watch Colorado State Rams take on a rather enfeebled North Colorado U, we popped into a true enigma of the North American highway: a Buc-cees.
What’s a Buc-cees. At its most essential, it’s a petrol station. But that’s like calling Lords a patch of grass, or the Mona Lisa decoration. Buc-cees, above all, is an experience.
The first thing that you notice is that it is HUGE. And it has to be. I’m not pulling your plonker, there must have been 300 people inside there. Some were buying merchandise (for a gas station, mind you!) some were at thr Brisket Bar where the staff were toiling and singing in such a way that made you think Snow White’s seven dwarves must have had their mine shut down for EPA violations and relocated to Texas for a better life. Some were at the coffee bar, filling their half gallon mugs ($1.99) with industrial quantities of coffee and low fat/no fat/negative fat milk. It was an unbridled Disney World of relentless capitalism, corny and nostalgic to a time that never really existed. Efficiency, variety, and obesity were all exceedingly high and on full display.
It was amazing.
The one thing that anyone who goes to a Buc-cees must do is go to their toilets. The founder of the chain had apocryphally visited a gas station dunny once on a road trip, and had such an unseemly experience that it altered his life trajectory to aim single handedly at producing a clean loo. And boy, did he deliver. Spotless is the right word. There were at least 20 people in there with me, but it felt like an oasis of calm. Have you ever gone to Singapore Air’s first class lounge at Changi? Me neither, but I imagine it’s a lot like that.
10/10, would recommend.
