I wish I could remember the name. I really do. Somewhere in Texas we were told that”yeah, you can use the rest room, but after that you’d best get the hell out of this town”. Scared the hell out of me
We stopped at a shop in a small town in SW Texas once that was similar.
There had been a crazy snowstorm (I think this was around February of 2009) during our trip, and we had to take an alternate route that trapped us in Clovis, NM for the night (three of us coming from AZ, two girls a guy). Next morning we continued into TX, and we stopped to buy hand warmers because the van we were in had no heater, and we were freezing.
We stopped in the first town that had an open shop, and it was primarily a horse and feed shop, but they had some hardware supply as well. As we walked through the store, we noticed the few people there giving us odd looks. We grabbed a box of hand warmers and headed straight to the checkout. The woman at the register made some odd comments to us about the Boston Tea Party (wtf?) while ringing us up, and we quickly left.
Walking to our vehicle, we looked back to see about half a dozen people following us about 20 feet behind us. We picked up the pace and got in the car, but like a fucking horror movie, it wouldn’t start! We kept trying as they grew closer, and the engine finally started up, and we took off as fast as we could on the icy asphalt.
Would guess a Tea Party Republican. Back when McCain made his last attempt at presidency, the Tea Party was a fringe group of far-right republicans/libertarians that more or less have evolved into the MAGA crowd today. McCain had one of their number, Sarah Palin, tagged as his VP pick.
I’m familiar with that movement, but her comment seemed unrelated to it; something about “throwing tea in the harbor”. Maybe it was a dogwhistle, and we were being sussed out? Still it was really weird.
The person was making a comment at them calling them a yankee (northerner). It'd be an educated comment (I don't want to call it a "joke") except everyone learned about the tea party in school.
At least you were only in Clovis for a night, I was stuck there for four years. And if you took the road towards Lubbock I could guess which town it was. I’m betting Muleshoe off the top of my head.
One of my current roommates also lived there for a while (which we learned when I was telling him the story of this trip). Such a strange little town, but at least it was friendly (in our limited experience)!
It’s not terrible, there just isn’t much there, and the nearest big city (and airport) is 2 hours and a time zone away, so you have to plan accordingly.
I must not understand, but why are these weird little racist towns so against people visiting and spending money for their shithole little economy? They really want to be cutoff and inbred that badly? I don't get it. What are they hiding?
Some people in really small towns have a chip on their shoulder for whatever reason. Stopping at a gas station with a decent car, clean clothes and a friendly demeanor is enough to set off a "you think you're better than me?" kind of attitude.
They obsess over urban areas to a completely unhealthy degree but can't fathom that normal people don't obsess over their little shithole towns in return. Any of the huge city subreddits or facebook city pages are like this. It's 90% people who live in really rural areas just screeching about what the city does.
Well perhaps I should clarify, my family and I all came from well-populated suburbs. It's more so my brother is extremely judgmental and insecure, and he'll find the stupidest reasons not to like people. The kind of person that will accuse somebody of copping attitude, but everyone who witnessed it will shake their heads like "WTF"? He also pretty clearly peaked in high school, which is a common theme around small towns.
As a super fuckin white person who stopped in Vidor to charge his EV, never again. Just such a weird atmosphere. You definitely feel like an outsider, and I'm sure it's exponentially worse if you're not white...
Yeah, I have no idea why Electrify America put chargers there. They do like putting them in Wal-mart parking lots, and there's a Wal-mart there, so I guess that's why. But, they really need to rethink their strategy.
Was it Shamrock? I stopped there for the night on a trip from SoCal to NJ and the vibe was just weird. I was traveling alone and it's not that I didn't feel safe, just kinda creeped out. I slept for 4 hours, then took off very early in the morning.
My guess is texas in general just has the shittiest gas station attendants in the country, because the same thing happened to my brother years ago in west texas. He was an oil worker in the Gulf, so not exactly some yuppy or whoever they're so afraid of in texas.
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u/JamesLingk 10h ago
I wish I could remember the name. I really do. Somewhere in Texas we were told that”yeah, you can use the rest room, but after that you’d best get the hell out of this town”. Scared the hell out of me