This past week the first Buc-ee’s opened here in Ohio. The event attracted Buc-ee’s fans from throughout the Midwest. Some reportedly camped out in front of the store. They saw sleeping on the pavement as a small price to pay, if it meant being among the first customers through the doors on the morning of the grand opening.
This is a gas station we’re talking about.
I can just imagine the reaction of some of the readers in Massachusetts or California. “Well, what do you expect of the unwashed masses in Ohio, that flyover state where most people vote Republican?”
But foolish mass events are not limited to Ohio or the Midwest. Consider the time, money, and emotional energy that people invest in Taylor Swift and spectator sports. Remember the Pokémon GO fever of a few years ago?
It would be easy—and facile—to dismiss all such followers of mass enthusiasms as dimwits or sheep. But there is something far more complex going on here. No one really cares that much about a gas station, even if every Buc-ee’s does have a vast, deluxe restroom.
And no, they aren’t all idiots.
I grew up during the 1970s and 1980s. I didn’t grow up in a small town, but I grew up in a close-knit suburban environment. I saw both parents every day, and my grandparents every week. I attended the same schools that my mother attended. Many of my classmates’ parents had been my mother’s classmates.
My growing-up environment felt almost like one big extended family. This doesn’t mean that everyone was always kind and supportive (though many people were). But there was a sense of: this is your home, your microcosm within the much larger, much more random and unknowable world.
I don’t feel that way about this twenty-first-century environment, and I know that many others share this sense of dislocation, or isolation. The situation is made even worse by the uncertainty of global events, and the bad behavior of our national leadership in recent years.
And yes, if you’re married (or otherwise romantically partnered) you might smugly say: “Well, I have my significant other.”
Perhaps you do…for now. Romantic partners are notorious for dying, moving on, and changing the locks on you. Most people, even if they’re romantically partnered, find that they need more than that.
I’m talking about a broader social support system. This is what used to be provided by communities of church, school, extended family, neighbors, and old friends. This was once the reality for many Americans—not in some distant, mythical past, but within my lifetime. I know, because I experienced it.
But we no longer attend church, we homeschool our kids, and most of our relatives live in another state. Old friendships and acquaintances are limited to Facebook.
It is therefore not entirely surprising that people seek group affiliation via Taylor Swift or Kansas City Chiefs fandom.
Or, perhaps, enthusiasm for the grand opening of the next Buc-ee’s.
So yes, I understand, on one level. But I can’t help reminding you: at the end of the day, it’s just a gas station.
-ET