Running on fumes for the past few miles—both literally and figuratively—I pulled in to the EZ Shop at the corner of N.W. 50th and N. May for a moderately quick fill-up. Having grown up in this area with the former Conoco station, sadly, such a formative part of my burgeoning youth for so very long, as my boots touched ground, I was quickly reminded of that old book by Thomas Wolfe and sighed to myself.
It had been nearly twenty years since I was last here and it showed. Taking a deep enough breath, I headed inside, opening the glass-door marked with a Martin Luther-esque edict regarding teenagers and their sagging pants. Jeans pulled up high, I remembered how my brother and I would walk here just about everyday after school, scrounging our loose change and found dollars together for comic books and snack cakes, maybe even a soda to split if there was enough.
The place had definitely changed. While the layout sure was the same, there were so many little tweaks here and there it felt like revisiting the house you grew up in, ransacked and repainted by the new owners. The comics were gone—Hell, the whole magazine rack was gone—and those heated glass cases that always carried burnt crispitos and day-old burritos were adios as well, replaced with…what’s this? Crockpot after Crockpot of soups, stews and other noodlish dishes…
This was quite the unexpected development.