With any luck we leave at noon
Drive three hours or so, it's three thirty PM or so and we drive back after an hour, maybe four thirty to seven thirty and the sun is still up. With any luck.
We were on the 40 at about Fuquay-Varina and my cheap paracord watch band buzzed. What was that, woke and startled.
Amber alert.
It read, Stephanie walks with a limp with her left pinkie always bent. The child's cheeks are chubby and she possibly has a mosquito bite on her left cheek.
When the harness came out at the apartment the dogs had screamed and froliked on the beige carpet. They were ready for the road.
It was hot and humid, the rain on and off. Dark and somewhat empty highways rolling through tall green North Carolina trees, many ringed with vines or walled off from the road expansion by orange plastic nets flapping in the carbreeze.
Only thing that upset me on the drive to South Carolina was a cleared out section where they were widening the road, they just piled up the tree corpses and let them burn at the side of the road.
Aesthetician told her about it and when we saw the signs she said we had to go. I don't know, I checked the arrival time on the navigation app trying to determine how much daylight that would leave, year of the rabbit reluctance in me.
The map says it's Hamer, South Carolina. This is after the trees crept higher and fused together, the living wall parting only to reveal wide muddy rivers active from the rain, crowned by massive white cotton clouds.
Rising above the highway was a tall structure with crouching yellow legs that clung to a support girder, and atop that strange shape on the horizon was a sombrero. Getting closer, it dwarfed a pale water tower that read S.O.B.
We pulled off the freeway and it was immediate. We were at the pet toilet, a tan building with a picket fence unpainted and surrounding a grass area, red plastic hydrant. And at the corner, a massive statue of a brown man with a mustache, red sash, black sandals, and a big mauve sombrero. He clutched his white belt and grinned looking sideways like there was a joke.
When I went in to use the toilet she noticed one of our dogs had decided to gnaw his foot so bad it was bloody so we couldn't walk him around too much.
Sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks and vans with families crawling over the humid latex paint sticky statues of hippos and rhinos and gorillas and you felt like you were definitely in Mexico.
Each building was a passive color but had a white or yellow sign with words like PUBLIC, SHOP, RESTAURANT, CHICKEN FILET. Bright letters announcing what any traveler might find here at Pedro's Leather Shop, Ice Cream Fiesta, Myrtle Beach Shop, Mexico Shop East. Further down across the street was the geodesic motel office pleasure dome, right by Pedro's Fire Department where they store white box vans with South of the Border painted down the sides.
I stayed in the car while she went into Mexico Shop for t-shirts and sunscreen lotion. While the dogs and I waited we saw an old man emerge from the street with a black camera, medium lens, smiled in his sunglasses, dark hat, and beach attire before climbing into the big red Chevy truck and driving off alone.
A family next to us one boy with big hair pinned under his cap with stars and stripes, his shirt read AMERICAN FLAG. That mini van driven two wheels deep over the low yellow curb. Windows open, young mother driver looking wildly confused, brown ponytail nearly catching in her cigarette as she whipped her head and flailed, van lurching and kids heads and arms flopping as it slowly rolled backwards and free of the slick curb.
Large man with a tiny daughter. He put her on the hippo and took her picture then wanted her to stand by it for another and she waived it off with both hands and made a run for the rhinoceros where they completed the same routine again.
She brought back shirts but no sun screen. One reads, I wish every day was Taco Tuesdays South of the Border South Carolina. The other
South of the Border 1949
Dillon, SC
In 1949, Mr Alan Schafer built a simple 18 x 36 foot beer stand known as South of the Border Beer Depot. As it adjoined the North Carolina counties, which were dry of alcoholic beverages, business boomed. A few years later a 10-seat grill was added and the business was re-named South of the Border Drive-in.
One may ask, how did Pedro come about? Well, Mr. Schafer went to Mexico to establish import connections and met two young men. He helped them get admitted to the United States and they went to work at the motel office as bellboys for several years. People started calling them Pedro and Pancho, and eventually just Pedro.
The words Pedro's Myrtle Beach Shop on an arch shape sign that frames the entrance to a shop that promises, come in and see the great white shark, on a smaller sign just below it. Inside, swimsuits and plastic mermaids, red sweatshirts boast Lifeguard South of the Border, colorful plastic donuts hang from the wall along with a spoked wooden ship's steering wheel. And on that back wall past rows of colorful trays low so the kids can see the enticing nautical plastic presented there. Goggles, turtles, orange and white squirt guns, sandals and fanny packs, flip flops of every faded hue, plastic fish staring up at the twenty-seven foot taxidermy shark, its eyes black and staring at the flourescent white bulbs and fish netting on the ceiling. Its teeth triangle and gapped, hollow mouth seeming frozen in what looks like the aftermath of some dull event like spitting or responding, yeah. Lower jaw out and to the side in that odd expression forever.
White sign with a cartoon Pedro floating in an orange boat, fishing pole curved like his soggy sombrero. It reads
The story of the great white shark
This magnificent creature was captured off the coast of Barbados on April 10, 1995 it was preserved by Gray Taxidermy of Pompano Beach, Florida.
At 27 feet in length it is one of only 3 of this size ever captured.
Please do not touch
or handle in anyway,
Thanks
Pedro
A small laminated sign in the entrance hangs next to a wiry black and white map of South of the Border. It warns those entering Myrtle Beach Shop,
Notice this shop sells certain humorous, risque items that some people feel should not be seen by small children.
If you feel this way, we have numerous other fine shopping areas
that do not sell this merchandise
The management
The most risque thing is a tie-die towel, white with an orange field, a spiral blue wave curling to its center, it has white stars reminiscent of a confederate flag.
Inside, she asked for sunscreen. We used to carry it but nobody bought it and now everyone asks for it.
While I waited in the car with the dogs four folks came out, dad in dark shirt, jeans, a hat, gray hair and red face, long features. They posed with their haul at the pink flamingo statue with the front of the shop in the background, and a second time with the street in the background.
Another man sat at the side of the beach shop smoking with his tiny daughter. She wore a beach dress and he had shorts, a USMC shirt, looked like a potato shaved with electric clippers where they used the same length guard for the whole affair so the stubble was a uniform length.
We got back on the highway.
Only about fifty miles and soon the signs that read things like, You're always a wiener at South of the Border, were replaced by advertisements for the reason for our journey: Buc-ee's.
One might describe the approach as swampy and vile, stumps and vines in a sticky morass breaking here and there through the high wet wall of green trees along the highway. Then we were at the off-ramp and taking pictures out the window of the chaos.
We found a parking space after taking the first entrance. The whole area was cleared and flattened. Buc-ee's was ringed by fat tan recreational vehicles. Folks in lawn chairs or simply teetering to and fro. It had rained but was still a summer day so attire was confused, some in jeans or dickies while others in shorts and flower blouses, young folks in tie dye or cutoff shorts, dark jeans and long hair. A Nag's Head Beach shirt or a logo hat. The spot we got was just beyond the electric car charging area and its smug and atomized crew of suburbanites too good to talk to one another. Red hats and sunglasses to hide ravenous rat eyes, tossing and trampling crinkling wrappers with webbed feet exposed in black sandals. Their sinewy legs exposed, white shorts and pastel polo shirts with sharp collars.
There was a thin strip of grass at the break between the parked car curb but massive and dark clouds were gathering, raindrops the size of cherries. That seemed easy, we got lucky parking so close.
She waited with the dogs.
Our initial plan was gas, food, and souvenirs, eat, then leave. But once we experienced the busy parking lot we decided on gas last so we could sit in the air conditioning and top off before we left.
I dodged sedans, pickup trucks that never went offroad, muddy minivans, pristine jeeps. Several people who looked like suburban or golf magazine models. I got to the corner where a modest size bronze beaver stood, folks posing for cell phone pictures. The beaver's mouth gaped, eyes and cap bill turned skywards, arms spread wide for a hug, his eyes peeking around his knob-like nose and watching the west entrance where we come from, he bore a look of horror, stunned and unable to escape The World's Largest Convenience Store.
Behind him the sliding doors and dark glass, brown brick wall with black smokers for sale, a long line of white freezers selling ice of two varieties, and then the north entrance with yet more brown glass sliding doors. The areas at these entrances were choked with people, many of whom seemed to be recovering from their experience inside or the north area where cars and trucks circled a long line of gas pumps, shielded from rain and sun by a tall tan roof. And there beyond was another massive collection of pumps for alternative fuel and yet more vehicles circling or paralyzed in futile search to top off and flee this chaos.
At that west door I turned my body sideways to slip past a family in sailing clothes, their arms stuffed with plastic Buc-ee's bags, white with a yellow circle and a stunned beaver portrait, child peeling plastic away from a long profane meat stick and looking confused but hungry enough to eat it. On my other side, a man in a dark Piggly-Wiggly shirt and black jean shorts emerged in a hurry. He immediately removed his glasses and gaped up at the rainclouds, letting the drops spill into and clean his eyes and cheeks with an expression of horror passing, the arrival of relief.
First thing in the west entrance are brown plastic wood panel booths with at least four employees in each one crammed shoulder to shoulder. Red shirts, black belt, khaki pants, dark shoes. Two lines on either side spilling back into the shelves and walls stacked with pastel and plastic goods. Between the lines of shoppers whose arms were full of haul, waiting to get out, a separator of yet more product. Sunglasses, wires and chargers, headphones to cancel the noise and block these people out, leather wallets and hunting knives, shirts and hats with military or hostile statements and images in the Vets Section.
I went the opposite direction and immediately found a wall of end caps with all flavors of sunscreen. I texted photos and she requested mineral-base lotion. I turned around clutching the tube in both hands and saw the Buc-1982 section that was loaded with t-shirts, stuffed toys, throw pillows, shot glasses, thermos and coffee mugs, all emblazoned with the beaver. I grabbed as much swag as I could carry and dodged kids and shopping carts and plastic pool toys in order to stand in line by the decorated plate section with strange affirmative phrases painted on them like USE YOUR MANNERS, COMIN IN HOT, and YES MA'AM, all scrawled in barely legible hand on white plates with blue accents.
I stood behind a very wet man with red cheeks, white stubble, sunglasses perched on the brim of his hat, long arms and black t-shirt and shorts. Behind the booths stacks of cigarettes stretched to the ceiling. Woman in line next to me gripped her cart with one hand and her kid's shoulder with the other, their wide eyes darting around as though looking for an attacker who might soon return.
Someone yelled, next.
She shook her neck around, eyes setting on a red shirt behind the counter, arm raised and waving her in.
The man in line ahead of me twisted around to avoid another shopper at the booth before disappearing behind her family. On the counter were sinister meat sticks and wads of tinfoil and the smell hit me. Buc-ee's BBQ and briskit sandwich. I realized I forgot the food. It was my turn to pay.
At the car I dropped off the swag and promised to return with food.
I walked past the bronze beaver and fireplace tables, black with star shape holes, they were piled up by the north entrance. I followed a confused family. One hauling a baby that clung to her like a koala in a flannel gown. The front room milling with people looking around at a few piles of beaver branded beach seats, the kind that are black spokes snap into place with a patch of plastic for your back and seat. I think there was a vending machine but had to move before I could figure it out. I was swept up by a family who would later reveal were from Oregon.
Inside were two more booths, less cigarettes on account of their walls being shoulder height to keep an eye on the aisles behind them that were strangely empty of people. The throngs of people in this middle column split by a table stacked with more merchandise. And a long table with a woman in an apron, glasses, long blond ponytail, and a black mask. She had no register.
Beyond the table in the center where a tall silver warmer sat, its shelves packed with white cones that had blue or red text, peanuts almonds cashews. I took the cinnamon glazed cashews.
Is there anywhere I gotta pay, and motioned to the paper cone in my hand.
Anywhere but here.
East wall beverage cases, tall and shining with can caps reading SPORT or WATER or maybe BEER, JUICE.
I went to my right because between me and the drinks were rows of snacks and bodies flowing around them. Sometimes a quick arm snatched something off a shelf. Other times a man holding it up and squinting, glasses on the forehead scrutinizing down the nose in the flourescent light.
There were food kiosks brimming with plastic encased custards and foods before a tall glass wall of doors which refrigerated yet more food. Jammed in among two or three waves of people who circled different directions like a mosh pit on the beach, flip flops, blouses and shorts, backward hats, a child riding the hip or stroller, somebody with a red basket that says Buc-ee's in white and it's full of wads of tinfoil dispensed in the eye of this lotion scented maelstrom, this hexagon made of stainless steel and glass, shelves busy with hands grasping and taking sandwich wads or meat sticks while five or six people writhed in the center working at a table full of meat and sauce. Orange on a white cutting board, feeding bread and skewers and silver trays of meat to the sandwich maker then wadding and stickering and stacking them in as frantic and sweaty as they could. The only sound was the low hum of people constantly remarking, oh wow first time what chaos where to excuse me pardon i've got to get out oh lord why
I tried to go direct to the sandwiches but got swept the wrong way and jostled into a couple who had dreadlocks, she wore a bikini top and shiny shorts all white and blue matching the shirt and shorts guy adjoined wearing sunglasses and eyeballing the wall of meat sticks touching his lips with his free hand. She tugged him along to the front and I slipped past and was able to get around a big guy gaping at the folks behind the counter like he's at a zoo and I got two different sandwiches a BBQ Turkey and a Split Brisket so now my hands were full so I leaned over some sinister orange sneeze guard and asked a sandwich lady, can I get a bag?
She looked at me, our faces lit by orange sandwichlight and said calmly, no you got a bag when you pay.
Where's the Beaver Nuggets?
She paused and her dead eyes didn't even register then she pointed over her left shoulder, behind the counter. I looked and just saw the low wall of cigarettes, the registers?
No, the shelves behind the counter.
Now I see them through the gaps in the crowd, yellow popcorn looking stuff in clear plastic bags stacked in rows on two aisles all on their own, nobody even back there on account of there's nothing else to look at.
There's a guy back there I don't see until I'm coming out of the nugget aisle and he's got braids and a cowboy hat and it's dark leather rolled up a bit on one side over his shorn and shiny side of his head and he's doing something I don't remember because of his attractive smile and he made eye contact. He was probably juggling meat wads or pulling bread from a sack.
I let the crowd push me around the meat kiosk and I was hoping it would get me to the nugget shelves then my hands were full with (receipt items) so I just settled in line moving west then snaking back east by a couple from Portland with big black backpacks and shiny black rimmed glasses, deep green shirts, shorts and hat. And there was somehow a man and his family or maybe it is kids standing, everyone was crammed in and we were all trying to get out now. We made eye contact after he was scanning the crowd and the sandwich pit and he says, first time?
Yeah. Coworkers said to come and tried to tell me but nothing could prepare
He touched his wife's back laughing, oh I tried too this is her first time as well
Incredible, both laughing, people pushing by and he was interrupted by another man. We locked eyes and his hard face melted into a wide smile reflecting my own because we were still laughing at the bustle and strange.
When I got closer to him the line was moving and he said, it's my wife's first time too, y'all go ahead, I'm waiting for her to get back. So the first couple went and the Oregon family was somehow there, child in dad's arm and rolling luggage at mom's feet. They went on ahead too talking about Oregon before the fella's wife appeared and they went out after paying.
Next.
I put my stuff down, hold the bag. I held it so she could put the bag of Beaver Chips with its open top.
I got it, she piled the sandwiches and glazed cashews in the bag and Beaver Nuggets in the other.
I pushed back outside and the rain was really coming down. I heard tires chirp and the slap of two plastic cars colliding on their quest for gasoline but I couldn't see it so I walked between cars and waited for a Jetta then I was back at my car where she had the dogs out on a leash.
We sat in the car and I spread the spoils out on the center console and dashboard. We sampled the crunchy corn puffs and split the sandwiches then ate some cinnamon glazed cashews when I realized I had to go back in a third time for a t-shirt for her.
The folks were rained out so it was pretty easy to get in the west entrance again and the lines were shorter but getting back to the shirts proved to be a challenge. There were eight people transfixed by the sun tan lotion selection so I had to go around the hunting knife display and squeeze between a woman's red plastic shopping cart at the pool toy carousel. She wrestled with pool noodles trying to enlist her daughters who ignored her, caught up in the stuffed beaver toys pouring out of the stand next to her. I crossed in front of them as they gaped at the mugs and shot glasses and saw that they would be replacing a bespectacled man in an Aloha shirt and fishing cap, his dark hair making his clothes seem faded by comparison. I followed him to the shirts but we were taken around the back of the display to avoid a couple of teens that were bouncing around the swim trunks and snorkels, flirting. I got the shirt and waited it out, folks slowly joining the mosh pit cause I got out that far and as I moved to use the north exit again these two Florida kids, tall with short dreadlocks, back and sides of their heads shaved, tie dye shirts and white sneakers. These two tall serious-looking young men loomed over folks who were compelled to get out of their way so I followed them back to the shorter line at the west entrance but lost them when I noticed dog treats and chews right by the leather wallets and hunting knives and I thought that dog might chew it instead of his foot and that meant less blood in my car so I had to find nice ones which he immediately neglected.
The final line indoors the two kids were with a woman in a riding cart somehow, front basket overflowing with sandwich wads and meat sticks and paper cones full of candied nuts. She slowly got it all out and scanned while we watched then someone on the other counter yelled, Next. So I crossed traffic to pay and escape.
Getting to the pump was far easier than I anticipated but I had to go diagonal out as another larger vehicle cut in opposite. Then we cut the line at the roundabout because nobody uses the north exit to leave. It was in front of the three flags. South Carolina, United States of America, and Buc-ee's confused looking beaver head logo. We followed oddly put strips of concrete to the newest Taco Bell either of us had ever seen, purple with QR code style art on it. The parking lot was full but nobody in the drive-thru line. We got the best made quesadilla with extra sauce and ate it in the parking lot looking at the wall of green at the edge of the dirt lot.
We drove back and at first lightning real close, cars flinching in the thunder on the wet asphalt. The brown rivers raging, swamp churning. Then in Raleigh a mist clung to the freeway like a thick fog. Dark shapes of cars moving impossibly in it, everyone going too fast and a sport utility vehicle or giant truck cutting us off so they could be the fastest one in there.