By Jennifer Goodman
There is something about gas stations that is chaotic and strangely comforting in its own eccentric way. A beautiful liminal space, the threshold from where you were and where you are going. It can feel almost otherworldly, like time slips beneath the flicker of fluorescent lights.
The glow shows everything in an uncomfortable, dreamlike haze: odd trinkets shining like artifacts, footprints left on the tile showing evidence of past lives. It’s always a little too bright, a little too quiet, like the world paused. The clock on the wall ticks, but it doesn’t feel like time moves forward here. It just circles around itself, looping in the hum of coolers and the distant chime of a door opening again.
In 2018, I ended up behind the counter of a gas station in Cape Girardeau. I had just left my job in graphic design, drained and craving something that felt new. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, only that I needed a change. And like so many turning points in life, this one began at a gas station.
Each shift, I would look up from staring mindlessly at the endless rows of cigarettes, and a car would be at my drive-through window. “Hi, whatcha need?” I’d ask, but when it was a regular customer, I already knew. “Two of them corn dogs an a 32 diet Coke,” said in that same rushed, raspy voice I heard every time I worked.
I collected all kinds of data on my regulars: their order, their routines and their stories. I had endless small talk and the occasional longer conversation. I was the only human interaction for some, and a reliable source of community for others. I loved it, meeting so many people with all kinds of backgrounds, in different walks of life, all sharing this place. It fascinated me.
In gas stations, people drift through like ghosts — not really here, but also, not fully gone. Look around: One guy lingers at the coffee station, stirring into the cup lost in thought. A woman counts out change with the slowness of someone who doesn’t want to go home yet. A teenager tries to pump gas alone for the first time. Everyone here is moving toward something, but for now, they share this strange pause — this temporary shared purgatory where this is nobody’s destination, but for a few minutes, it belongs to all of us.
It’s almost like gas stations exist on the edge of reality, all strangely familiar no matter where I may be. Different towns, different roads, but always the same. I start to wonder if maybe it’s not a gas station, but a single weird universe we all slip into when we need to refuel not just our cars, but something in ourselves. Maybe it’s a place where for a short time, nothing is demanded of me except to keep moving. Eventually.
One rainy Saturday while working at the gas station, a stack of newspapers caught my eye like a signal cutting through the haze — a special section insert for the music festival starting later in the day. The bold print felt electric. If art like that was being made in Cape, I knew I had to be part of it. And so I would be.
When I left the gas station, it felt like a new beginning. The door slowly shut behind me like I was never there. Almost as if the gas station reset itself for the next person slipping through its strange gravity. I got back in the car and pulled out onto the road. It was like the world felt real again, but slightly different, as if something shifted while I was inside.
And now, settled into my job making art again, I keep going back. Whether it’s late at night with heavy eyes and heavier thoughts, or somewhere in the middle of a sunburned road trip, I find myself drawn back to that eerie comfort of gas stations. Not because I belong there, but because it understands the parts of me that don’t quite belong anywhere else. The in-between versions of myself. The shifting, searching, unknown pieces I carry quietly.
Maybe that’s the real reason gas stations feel the way they do — not haunted, but holding. A place that catches us in motion, lets us pause without explanation, and never asks who we were before we walked in. Just offers a 32-ounce soda and a place to exist for a moment.
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