Gasoline Fumes
Ford Econoline van built in 1975.
Must have been 1983 the first time I smelled gasoline.
There's nothing more American than the smell of gasoline.
We were heading to Tulsa to visit Aunt Daisy.
The sliding door was open
and Dad was filling up the tank
outside of Oklahoma City.
Mom stood outside the bathroom door
telling my brother not to touch anything.
Gas was a dollar and a quarter
and there were always free two-liter bottles
of cola with each fill up.
Truck stops like these were sprinkled along
interstate highways throughout
Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
They were called Stuckey’s and they were famous
for their rubber steak and cheese sandwiches.
They all had gift shops full of t-shirts and knick-knacks
that proved to family and friends
that we had driven through places like Oklahoma.
There's nothing more American than the roar of motorcycle caravans
and tractor-trailers burping off in the distance.
Dad slid the van door shut.
Mom made everyone wash their hands, again.
I pretended to drive our van from the back seat
using a roll of duct tape as a steering wheel.
Watching stories blur together at sixty-five miles per hour.
We listened to songs from the 1950s on the radio
and tried to get every trucker we passed to blare their horns.
Looked at houses in the middle of nowhere and wondered
why anyone would want to live so far away.
We counted endless oil wells.
I thought I could listen to conversations
from phone lines if I followed them
on the window with my finger.
We drove almost everywhere.
Rolled across most lower forty-eight states.
Mom and Dad wanted us to see places
most people only get to visit in photographs.
That summer my brother and I were photographed
at a rest area wearing t-shirts that said
we went on vacation to Oklahoma.
Gasoline smells different next to interstate highways.
There's nothing more American than the interstate.
Nothing more American than watching America move.
-Charly Fasano
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