Flying J

Last Saturday we're on our way to Marty and Brenda's wedding. Having just blown into Rochester, NY the night before via a 7 hour drive and a West coast plane trip, we're completely on top of it. The wedding is at 11:00 in Alden and by about 10:50 we're still miles away, really low on gas and I'm just putting my mascara on.

So we pull into the Flying J in Corfu to tank up. Bob starts pumping gas and says why don't I go in and get coffee. I head across the windy parking lot toward the store since we're desperate for caffeine before we hit the Lutheran Church.

The second I open the door to the Flying J, it hits me right in the mascara. We're in the mid-West. Forget that we're in the flats between Buffalo and Rochester NY. No. In America the Midwest starts just after the Berkshires.

First of all, until I came in here, the town seemed deserted. Just a bunch of fields and some prisons. But inside, it's like the Corfu General Store or something. There's the guy lifting up his little boy to get a donut from the case. There's a some truck drivers chatting it up. There's a bunch of people over by the Lotto thing. There's a few men getting coffee from the spicket by the Slurpee machine. Some guy is checking the race sheet. And there's a hard-boiled woman with a tattoo manning the cash register.

And every man, woman and child has just frozen in mid-gesture to look at me.

The thing is, I'm wearing a sleeveless black dress, heels, makeup, my dress-up jewlery. But I think it's the part about blowing in the door, fluffing and fixing my windblown hair and tossing my wispy chiffon shawl over my shoulder that has taken it completely over the top. In this room, in this place, it's like I just walked off the set of Sex and the City.

Soooo...OK then...straighten my dress...clutch my little black bag...and...set off at an East coast pace toward the big silver coffee taps next to the Slurpee machine.

The coffee is scalding hot and smells like burnt sludge. There's a guy with a dull smile blinking at me holding the cream carton, so I skip the cream and totter over to pay tattoo lady. I high-heel it outta there. As the door shuts behind me a giant gust of wind blows my shawl over my face and the scalding sludge drips down my hand.

I get in the car and Bob says "No espresso?"