Travels in a Tin Can

goods were on offer as well. This particular store displayed the biggest
collection of crap ever seen outside a granny's living room. Including:
necklaces in angel shaped Velour boxes; Magic Ink New Testament quiz and
colouring books; key rings featuring three inch deformed ceramic dogs;
broken fridge magnets; otter shaped neck pillows; pearlised horse shaped
mantel clocks; dodgy looking elastic ball things; plus a collection of pills and
sprays to help you get high and/or laid. Anything that was unrelated to driving
was on sale.
Then there was the other reason for stopping at gas stations, actually
re-fuelling. Often the whole process, including paying, could be conducted at
the pump without having to speak to people or enter the shops. This was
fortunate, because with so many exciting things to look at inside we would
have never have left were this not the case. On occasion we had to seek
advice in order to get the pump started - different companies and States
sometimes had different designs and they were all different to UK pumps, and
twice we encountered full service stations, where a staff member put the fuel
in for us. Death Valley was the first time this happened - complete with
references to 'mofos' - and the other time was in a little town called Sheffield.
This was a serious 'one horse' place (much the same as its namesake in
England, but minus the sprawling industrialisation) and we had left the
interstate to find it as fuel was very low and there were no services to be
seen. In fact there was not a lot of anything to be seen - we were in Texas
after all.
The petrol was very expensive and the pump was so slow that in order
to put the man who served us out of his misery we only got him to put in 25