I live in a rural, midwestern, blue collar world where many working people rely on the Cenex station or Circle Ks for their breakfasts and lunches. I am one of them on occasion of course, especially when I’m traveling across the region for music. I know all the best places to get the jerky sticks I like and the store with the good bathrooms and caramel rolls, the coffee bar and the ones that stay open past ten. Right off the interstate or on state highways, in tiny towns along the way, you name it and I’ve likely stopped for sunflower seeds or Cheetos, and, if Dad’s with me after a performance, an ice cream sandwich out of their chest freezer, per tradition.

You see a snapshot of the communities when you stop at these local truck stops or corner stores. Sometimes there’s a table or two where the old-timers sit and drink coffee out of Styrofoam cups. Sometimes there’s a constant stream of high school kids coming in and out like they own the place (because they’re also running the place). Or it’s moms grabbing ice for the cooler on their way to a camping trip or cowboys and cowgirls pulling horse trailers to the next rodeo or the occasional bus full of a small-town basketball team grabbing a snack for the three-hour drive home on a Tuesday night after a win. Or a loss. You can usually tell the outcome without asking.

The further you get out east in North Dakota the less white, ¾ ton pickups you encounter. And, unless they’re Red River Valley farmers, the cleaner the boots on the men. I am reminded quickly as I point my car in that direction that I’m living in a unique corner of the world—prosperous and buzzing and navigating unprecedented times.

And so I like it, specifically, when I spot a man of this caliber in my community, the one with a hard hat hanging on the rack in his company pickup wearing fire retardant clothing and big, steel toed boots coming out of the station holding a box of pizza or a sandwich wrapped in cellophane and then a little bottle of chocolate milk.

In a world where these working men flood these gas stations in town, stepping out of company pickups or semis, or trucks pulling horse trailers, looking a little dirty and scuffed and weathered from working outside in the harsh elements, there’s an expectation that it’s all Copenhagen and energy drinks for these guys. These guys that, in the history of this place that boomed from 1,200 people to nearly 10,000 in a blink over a decade ago, acquired a reputation of turning this small section of the country into the wild west.

And maybe it was a little bit true for a while there, and some of them deserved the blame for sure, but it’s that little bottle of Cass Clay tucked under his arm while he steps back out into the wind or the rain or the relentless heat that endears me to him.

Weren’t they all just little boys?

Same with those old timers drinking free refills of drip coffee. Once they were on that basketball bus, maybe before that highway was paved and the small corner Cenex was turned into a travel plaza. They have something to say about it, the little oasis that fuels families on their way out of town and moms on their way to work, employing the local teenagers and making sure there’s a place to grab late-night Doritos and sons or husbands or daddies drinking chocolate milk on their lunch break, all of us stopping in, fueling up, holding the doors for one another on our way through another day in midwestern, rural, blue-collar America…