New York!  Land of my birth.  It looks pretty much the same.  Today we got rained on, but then the sun came out and right now it is very nice.  Sitting in the camp store, hangin' out on the wifi, trying to get some work done.  As the sun starts to come out I feel myself coming back out of my numbness into my own personality.​

Today I want to write a bit about gas stations.  Chances are, many of us don't think much about gas stations.  We probably think of them as faceless nameless corporate wastelands where we fuel up and get out as quickly as possible.  In many large cities, that's all they are.  But in small towns, the gas station represents the one piece of retail that everybody needs.  When a town is small enough to only have one thing, that one thing is almost certainly going to be a gas station, because even rural folks need to put gas in a car (in fact they need it even more).  So the gas stations becomes the "retail everything"; the general store, the movie rental place, etc.  One thing I always enjoy is when the gas station lets local folks sell whatever they're making locally; usually food of course but sometimes also arts and crafts.  If I make seashell watches in some tiny town, chances are the only hope I have of selling any is (other than the internet) the front counter at the local gas station.  So that's where you find them, the little trinkets and doodads that identify a place as itself and not somewhere else.  And, of course, for us they are godsends; places to park, buy a coke or a beer, hang out, fill up the water.​

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