Banal Series #23, Truck Stops

 These bastions of rest and refueling dot the landscape across the continent. They bear familiar logos: Flying J, Pilot, Love's, all promising a viable stopping place. The logos themselves are perhaps the most enchanting. The familiarity cultivated and conjured around the brand graphic - it beckons the weary traveler in. Truckers like the truck friendly environs of the truck stop, devoid of hassles of parking often found on public roads, the truck stop provides a place to rest. To decompress. Log D.O.T. sleep hours. 

Amenities such as shower facilities, and a full service large convenient store, or small omnibus grocery store are commonplace. Most, if not all, have an aisle or two dedicated to CB accessories, and to hardware such as wrenches, pliers, hammers, and euphemistically named truncheons called "tire knockers". DVDs can be had, sometimes rented, and returned one way style at the next participating truck stop. Some stops even have radio shops for repairs to CB equipment, and a wink and a nod, and maybe a couple of hundred cash can buy you an illegally powerful citizen band modification - capable, from what I've been told - of sending a signal dozens of miles.

Food, of the greasiest of greasy spoon caliber, and of the most down home of down home is often served in a short order diner which may or may not be affiliated with yet another national chain. The truck stop restaurant is perhaps the crowning piece. Waitresses, adorned in the archetypical costume of what is to be thought of as emblematic of a short order server, jostle and palm serving trays to booths filled with hungry and downtrodden truckers. These familiar, or seeming familiar things are almost necessary in the truck driving world. The thousands of miles over lonely highways take their understandable toll on even the most gruff and bearded of truckers.

The truck stop serves as a meeting point, a regrouping point. A respite. A node along America's ductwork of Interstates, as freight traverses the continent.