by Brad Isbell
We talk a bit about food on the podcast and even more on Twitter. The Talking Heads titled a record called More Songs About Buildings and Food. Maybe we’ll produce More Tweets About Polity and Biscuits. We do care about food. And culture. Given where we live, that happens to be Southern culture, and a cherished but-lowly part of that culture’s foodways is being lost: the humble gas station biscuit.
A gas station biscuit is not any biscuit purchased at a gas station or convenience store. It’s possible to buy biscuits at those places which are prepared off-site and merely reheated. It’s also possible to find biscuits ostensibly prepared on site but which are roughly the quality of the “scrambled eggs” freely offered in hotel breakfast buffets. Gas station biscuits are, to use a trendy adjective, intentional. They are made with a purpose—to please a regular, local clientele who care. Bad biscuits are for the desperate or the uninformed. They are for those (mostly) men in a hurry—men with so much on their minds that food is simply for sustenance.
True gas station biscuits invariably come from independent establishments; they are not to be had at chain stores. The change from independent and locally-owned to chain convenience stores is what killed my best local gas station biscuit source. And I’m going to tell you about the days before the demise.
It looked like any country (meaning not city) convenience store on a moderately busy road. This road happened to link a good part of three rural counties to where the jobs were. The owner was local and though he was rarely there, everybody knew his name. Occasionally he’d fill in and run the register, at which two dollars would buy a good cup of coffee and one sausage biscuit. Marketing was not a top priority, hence the randomly chosen business name: Fun Food. Marketing was not necessary because the business had three huge and well-known selling points—a location on the right side of the four-lane for morning commuters, a separate diesel pump for trucks (with room for trailers), and biscuits prepared to a reliably high standard. People get fuel and biscuits on the way to work, not on the way home.
A tenderloin and egg biscuit from Wresby’s favorite gas station
The biscuits were probably not frozen, nor exactly homemade. But they were reliably good. More important, what went between or on those biscuits was prepared on the grubby stovetop and griddle behind the counter by a lady who learned to cook breakfast at home, not from a laminated corporate instruction sheet. The sausage was on the well-done side (country people still believe pork is safest and tastiest on the dark/well-done side). The scrambled eggs were decidedly not of the institutional variety. And the offerings included things the Hardee’s across the street didn’t have, like fried baloney (that’s what it’s called no matter you spell it).
Waiting in line to pay for my simple sausage biscuit (plucked from a warming box at the register) I’d often hear guys with work boots and NASCAR hats place custom orders like “three baloney biscuits, two with mustard and fried egg on it." A certain kind of working man, who may have had little control over his work environment or even his home, had absolute authority at the Fun Food. He could order his breakfast exactly the way he wanted it, and there were women who would respond promptly if not always happily.
We have not spoken of gravy. If biscuits are comfort, sausage gravy is the warm cordial that, on some days, seems like the only cure for what ails you. Gravy is basically a semi-viscous sausage biscuit—biscuit intensified, but less portable. It is extra-strength comfort that sometimes runs down your chin. At least one older man in the neighborhood of this establishment built the early part of his day around its gravy supply. He lived about half a mile away. He walked, arriving at an accustomed time having crossed a busy four-lane road. Waiting for him every day next to the cash register was a 20-ounce lidded styrofoam cup filled with warm gravy. He would plunk down a dollar and exact change, exchange pleasantries or a joke, then turn back home, his breakfast at home now fully provisioned. Again, you don’t get that service at the fast food franchise.
I now know of only one gas station biscuit local to me. It comes from an independent interstate-exit gas station/fireworks outlet unironically named Bimbo’s. The stove and grill are filthy, but the biscuits are good. Not corporate good (meaning predictable, repeatable, and fast), but local good. And they’re good for the soul seeking encouragement to face the day or who needs to recall a time when someone cooked your breakfast because they cared.