TulaneLSU's Top 10 things I cannot stand about Buc-ee's

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, I like to do Top 10 lists. These lists help me analyze places and things that I otherwise would overlook or fail to give adequate attention. Usually, the lists serve a productive and positive function. I entered Buc-ee’s today with that intention and hope.

You see, Mother had a knackering for Southern cuisine, so we made a day trip to Paula Deen's Family Kitchen in AWO. On the way, like many other Louisiana pilgrims headed east, we made a stop at Buc-ee’s. It was not my first stop at this location, but I pray it will be the last.

Buc-ee’s is perhaps the most depressing, most hopeless, least edifying construct of the last century. Rather would I spend my days doing the duties of a mudlark or Groom of the Stool than enter Buc-ee’s again. If one could capture all that is bad about America and put it in a snowglobe, that snowglobe would have a Buc-ee’s in it. It is a destroyer of culture and dreams,a soul murderer, an inversion of the Garden. When future civilizations look back at the beginning of the end for the United States, they will point not to pandemic, not to racial strife, not to the decline of Protestantism, not to economic collapse. The sage ones will see the spread of Buc-ee’s throughout this land as the tipping point at which America went from civilization to chaos.

I honestly entered this establishment hoping to do a Top 10 things about Buc-ee’s. I truly did. But I could not. Once I entered that massive lot, and saw the totality of it all, I recognized it for what it is: a new incarnation of Baal.

Friends, I can now try to cleanse the body and spirit from the filth only by condemning in this list the horrors I saw, the fouls I smelled, and the fullest experience of perdition open to us. It is no accident that this locale, equidistant from Mobile and Perdido Bay, was chosen.

TulaneLSU’s Top 10 things I cannot stand about Buc-ee’s:

10. It is disgustingly crowded



If the crowds were polite and refined and had a semblance of the supposed and much ballyhooed genteelness of the Old South, it might be tolerable. Instead, the crowds are of tattooed smokers in lifted Chevy trucks with exhaust pipes that are as wide as a water main and tires extending beyond the truck’s body. There are also the 72-month financed Chevy Tahoes filled with beach junk and a family of self-centered push-forwards whose only concern in this world is for the safety and financial success of those in the vehicle with them. So lost from the ideals upon which our country was founded that our Fathers would not recognize them as Americans, even though they may descend from them. And then there are the entitled RV drivers, who think they are welcome in a gas station that explicitly prohibits 18 wheelers. I’d rather an 18 wheeler than these slick RV road hoggers. There is not a more entitled bunch of drivers than this lot. It's miraculous that all those high trucks are occupying spots for those with handicaps. One would think getting in and out of a vehicle with such a height would be difficult for one requiring a special spot deemed handicapped.

Pro tip: use the back entrance to avoid the traffic. Notice also the liberal use of pentagrams on its building.

9. The bathrooms are not as clean as advertised



Are they, on average, cleaner than most interstate gas station bathrooms? Probably, but I never noticed Love’s bathrooms being dirty. Nonetheless, on this trip, my toilet stall was decorated with grass and dirt and feces streaks in the bowl. If coronavirus is potentially spread through feces, I hope the previous occupant was well.

8. The food is terrible



There is nothing Buc-ee’s makes that is worth buying and eating. It is almost all high-fructose junk food, quickly made and highly priced. Of the most overrated things are the sugar roasted nuts. These items may seem tony, but they are bologna. Gas station hot dogs on those rollers, possibly rotating for the last 75 hours, taste better than Buc-ee’s food.

7. Items are junk



One wonders why Buc-ee’s does not sell better quality goods marketed for a greater range of tastes. I take this cutting board of Alabama for example. Where is Goodwater? Or Ashland? There is room for Union City and Phenix City, but not for Tuskegee? Something is rotten on the Baldwin Beach Express.

6. Commercializing religion



What does the Cross have to do with Buc-ee’s? I can see some well-to-do Mobilian sitting in her Orange Beach condo getting quite inebriated with this glass. Way to make something that is a a holy symbol of love profane, Buc-ee’s. I take back nothing from the introduction.