Memoirs of a Gas Station: A Delightfully Awkward Journey Across the Alaskan Tundra

By Sam Clemens

Early one May, Sam Clemens arrived in the breathtaking wilderness of Denali, Alaska with a smile on his face and adventure in his heart. But less than 24 hours later, both had evaporated as he stood behind the counter of a filthy gas station—his new place of employment—and tried to piece together what exactly had gone wrong.

MEMOIRS OF A GAS STATION is a New York Times bestselling personal account of a summer trapped in a convenience store on the edge of Denali National Park. It is a hilarious journey across the Alaskan tundra and headlong into the ridiculous world of seasonal employment. The summer began with shock, horror, and denim shirts as Sam struggled to accept his new role as a gas station employee. To escape it, he took to the forests of Denali at every free moment, soon finding himself face-to-face with an angry adult moose, shivering numb trying to last the night on a frigid mountainside, and being seduced by a Mormon divorcee.

In a style that recalls the honest, introspective humor of authors like Bill Bryson and Chuck Klosterman, MEMOIRS OF A GAS STATION takes you on a raucous ride through the best and worst summer of one man's life. From booze-soaked employee parties to one very awkward romantic episode in a tree house, Sam learned more than he ever planned about the Last Frontier. But weekends spent stumbling through seedy Alaskan bars and hitch-hiking to remote destinations gave him a unique perspective on life, and led him to find friendship, adventure, and love in the most unexpected places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sam Clemens
• Release date: Jan 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9798201658151

Book preview

One

The Beginning

You’ll be working at the gas station, right? The woman said it with a smile, like it was a good thing.

No, I replied. She clearly had me confused with someone else. I didn’t come all the way to Alaska to work at a gas station. That would be terrible. Now, I can generally find a bit of good natured humor in working shit jobs. Sometimes shit jobs are funny, even when you're the butt of the joke. For example, carnival game attendant, horse inseminator, or server at a medieval-themed restaurant. If you have one of these jobs, your friends will make fun of you and your sense of self-worth will erode, but if you're a good sport you can laugh at yourself and identify at least something redeeming about your line of work. However, gas station employee is not one of these jobs. Gas stations have filthy bathrooms and late hours. There’s nothing funny about working at a gas station. It is worse than impregnating horses.

Oh. She had a puzzled look on her face. I was talking to a short, roundish woman; no doubt a lifetime resident of Alaska. Her tired eyes studied me suspiciously. I thought Karen’s list had you working there. Karen was the head of retail operations, the one who interviewed and hired me, and ultimately had the final say on where I worked.

Nope. I was standing firm. I’m at the gift shop. In all truth I wasn’t entirely sure where I was supposed to be working. The contract I signed was a little vague…but I was pretty sure it said something about a resort gift shop somewhere. And it damn sure didn’t say anything about a gas station – there is no chance I would’ve consented to retail petroleum sales. Seriously, I would’ve rather spent the summer branding cattle.

At one point during our conversation, it briefly occurred to me that maybe I was nitpicking. When you think about it, there isn’t that big a difference between working at a gift shop and a gas station. Then when you think about it more, yes there is. There’s a huge difference. In one case, you’re working at a gas station. End of discussion.

Okay, we’ll just check the list when we get to the warehouse to make sure. I was walking with this woman (possibly named Sarah) down to the retail warehouse, where she would get me my uniform and eventually drive me to my place of employment. It was my second day in Alaska, and I was supposed to be starting work in the afternoon. Sarah wasn’t making it easy.

As we strolled the quarter mile to the warehouse to check The List for the moment of truth, I became less confident with each step that I was in the right about this whole situation. Sarah seemed like she knew what she was talking about.

This was a problem.

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The proposal came abruptly one day in the spring. I logged on to my computer and read the following email:

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Hey Bro,

What's your plans for the summer? Nothing? Well, you should go and work in Alaska with me. Broads, beer, bush whacking, 23 hours of sunlight, the list goes on. But seriously, you should think about it. We'd make 9 an hour, plus room and board. Give me a call.

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It was from Jim. I wasn’t surprised that he wanted to spend a summer in Alaska – that’s absolutely something Jim would do. The man's a globe-trotter; by the time he was 20, he'd been to roughly 92 different countries. I’m pretty sure he sent the email from somewhere in Uganda. Some call it wanderlust; I’m convinced it had something to do with his mother drinking while she was pregnant, though this can’t be proven.

What surprised me was that Jim asked me to go with him, because I am absolutely not that type of person. Long story short, I am average. I fear change, relish the comfort of home, and attend the same handful of bars and restaurants each weekend. I dress average and speak like an average white male. My haircut is exactly halfway between the most boring and most extreme styles on the planet. I drink a lot of Coca Cola and make average jokes on a fairly regular basis. And when it comes to Jim’s proposal, I adhere to the code of 98 percent of the American population: don't step outside your comfort zone. And Alaska certainly resided outside that zone. Yes, I was aware of the opportunity to work a seasonal job in some remote location. In fact I always found the proposition a little intriguing, but I wasn’t going to actually do it. That’s crazy talk; it’s impractical, completely unpredictable, and probably wouldn’t work out anyway. Only weirdoes actually do these things.

So naturally, I wouldn’t be going. And Jim should’ve known this – I assumed he knew me better after we’d spent our entire high school careers together. But that was years ago, and the time might’ve clouded his sense of reality. I decided to respond by telling him it sounded cool, and I’d think about it. Then in a month or so, I’d politely decline, tell him I couldn’t make it work, it wasn’t feasible or practical, I couldn’t afford it, I was needed back home, I had to do a summer internship to complete my college degree. Some combinations of half-truths and bullshit. It wouldn’t be hard; the details could be worked out later.

But for some reason, the thought of actually doing it never left my mind. After all, it was an intriguing proposition. I had never been much farther north than our native Minnesota, I certainly enjoyed both broads and beer, and had a decent on-again-off-again relationship with bushwhacking. Maybe the fact that Jim seemed to know what he was doing made the proposal seem a little more feasible. The man knew how to travel; I'd heard rumors of him working for a short time wrestling wild boars somewhere near the Ivory Coast. It would be like having a tour guide. As the days passed and I considered it more, the idea of actually saying yes started to gain ground on my conventional thinking.

Plus, I had absolutely no plans for the summer. It was the spring of my junior year of college, and I hadn’t even begun looking for work. Maybe this Alaska thing wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe it wasn’t just weirdoes who did these things. Maybe Jim's mom didn't drink during pregnancy.

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Two weeks later, I sat across the table from Jim in a crowded coffee shop in downtown Minneapolis. On his laptop, we each filled out online applications for Aramark, a massive company which owned nearly every resort in Denali, Alaska. Denali was our destination, because Jim said so. Not long after, I got a call from Karen, who conducted a brief phone interview, and informed me I would be perfect for one of Aramark’s retail jobs at a Denali resort. Retail. That’s all she said.

I should’ve known.

Two

Hostels & Serenades

We hopped off the plane in Fairbanks in mid-May with bulging suitcases and positive attitudes. The pay wasn’t going to be great, but we were getting cheap room and board, and this Alaska place was supposed to be quite the draw in the summertime. After faxing in my signed contract, I had spent an ample amount of time talking myself into how much fun it would be. It'll be weird, but fun. And good for you. These are the things I tried fervently to believe. And you know, after a while, it actually kind of worked. I was committed.

The plan was to spend the night in Fairbanks and catch a shuttle for Denali in the morning. We got a cab from the airport to something called Billie’s Backpackers Hostel. The cab driver spoke roughly three words of English, which for some reason didn’t seem to deter him. He looked Korean, wore a Yankees cap, and claimed to be a 30-year resident of Alaska. At least I think that’s what he said…there was a lot of Korean in there. Thankfully, Jim took the front seat, so he had to struggle through most of the conversation, which was fairly one-sided. The man liked to talk. All I got out of his ramblings was he was a former minister (or priest or rabbi or something) and, according to his research, humans should live 500 years or so but don’t because they eat red meat. The other 10 minutes of conversation could’ve been anything. I had no idea, and neither did Jim, so he tried to act polite. The man could’ve called Jim’s sister a 50-cent hooker, and Jim would’ve laughed and nodded. Haha. Yep...yep. I hear what you're sayin.

Mercifully we arrived at the hostel. Billie’s was a cozy little place on the outskirts of Fairbanks surrounded mostly by woods. It was painted purple and had a down-home feel. This was my first hostel experience, mostly because I never did the obligatory semester in Europe in college – again, the comfort zone (and a healthy distaste for overcast skies and small cars I suppose). Anyway, I enjoyed Billie’s thoroughly. Jim and I grabbed a few of the communal bikes and headed to the general store (yes, they still have those in Fairbanks) for a 12-pack – which, by the way, was incredibly expensive. If you ever go to Alaska, bring your own beer. Back at the hostel, we sat at the communal dining table and drank warm Miller Lite as we conversed with a Swedish girl and a German guy. Pleasant folks, they told us they were backpacking across the state. Jim fell in love with the girl within the first three minutes (which is kind of his thing), and busted out his acoustic guitar (which is also kind of his thing). As will become more and more obvious over the course of this reading, Jim didn’t miss out on the whole Europe experience.

He and I had always had kind of a strange relationship. Throughout high school, we developed a very strong friendship; at least within a stone’s throw of best-friend territory. Oddly enough we were never really alike in many ways. Nobody really knew this; most people saw we were friends, realized that we were both tall and skinny, both had short hair, and both ate a lot of cheap frozen pizzas, and they assumed we were like-minded people. But this was not the case; we never did like many of the same things. For example, I enjoyed hanging out with people that didn’t suck; he liked cliché college kids who considered wearing a hemp necklace some form of political statement. I listened to bands like Zeppelin and Metallica, he was fonder of no-talent ass-clowns who strummed their acoustic guitars and sung in falsetto in some attempt to either become icons or seduce teenage girls. These are just some of the fundamental differences. In what I believe are the four most sensitive topics for debate – music, politics, sports, and religion – Jim and I were, at least at the time, polar opposites. But for some reason, none of that ever mattered to either of us. Maybe the only real common ground Jim and I ever had was our shared belief that two people don’t need to agree on things in order to be friends. Conventional wisdom tells us this is backwards and weird; why hang out with someone if you can’t talk about the things you care about, at the risk of constant argument? Well, Jim and I regularly talked about the things upon which we disagreed, and in turn, we were constantly arguing. But that’s what made our friendship work: we had no problem with arguing. While most people tend to shy away from argument and view it as some form of ugly social confrontation, Jim and I embraced it. We found it enjoyable and stimulating to debate someone of opposite views but similar intellect. Argument was the basis for our friendship.

I pondered all of this as I watched him try, in vain, to seduce the Swedish girl with Jack Johnson songs. This is something I found fairly pathetic yet amusing, and I would inevitably make fun of him for it later. But that same day, he would make fun of me for spending countless hours of my life following professional sports teams, something I’m sure he found pathetic and (possibly) amusing. And I suppose both of these things are fairly stupid, as are many things humans tend to do. But if we enjoy our respective stupid activities, there’s really no harm in them. As long as they aren’t...you know...murder or something. To each his own, you might say. And I believe that notion is what united Jim and me.

Eventually I retired upstairs and found a vacant bunk-bed outfitted with sheets that hadn’t been updated since the 1970s. They smelled at least half-clean, so I laid my head down and closed my eyes.

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I awoke in the morning from what was more of a nap than a night’s sleep. Although the sun never really sets during the summer in Alaska, the hostel management didn’t see fit to have blinds on the windows. The shuttle to Denali showed up at 9 sharp. We hopped on and settled in for the 4-hour ride to our future home.

Three

The Arrival

Denali National Park and Preserve is six million acres of pristine wildlife, which basically means two things: it's obscenely pretty to look at, and it's obscenely big. Even for someone who has been there, six million acres is nearly impossible to fully comprehend; it's just a lot of space. However, most of it isn't navigable to the average camper – there's only one road in the entire park, so you're basically limited to whatever you can hike from there. But it's more than enough.

Even those parts that are so slightly touched by mankind are stunningly beautiful. We're talking mountains, rivers, rolling tundra, assorted shrubbery, and a bunch of large mammals. Probably the most prevalent of these are moose – often seen grazing in glacial lakes or scaring the shit out of tourists. Yes, moose will attack if provoked, and their mere physical stature can make Aunt Ethel nervous. Slightly rarer are grizzlies, though they're numerous enough that you have a legit chance of seeing one on any given camping trip. Dall sheep spot the skyline as they maneuver across rocky cliffs too treacherous for human travel – more often than not they're just white dots on the horizon. Occasionally, you can see a gray wolf patrolling the tundra. Snowshoe hare are positively rampant. And then there are caribou. Oh, caribou.

Caribou are interesting animals, mostly because of their sheer worthlessness. Incredibly stupid creatures, they exist to wander aimlessly, and it’s amazing they can even keep themselves upright and in herds. Most develop cataracts in their eyes, severely limiting their sight and contributing to the lemming-like meandering. They’re not even fun to look at; they just kind of walk. Caribou are like the wildebeest of Alaska. Wildebeest, of course, are the African antelope that are most famous for being eaten by lions on the Discovery Channel. It’s clear that being eaten is their one and only contribution to society; even in The Lion King, they are depicted only as food. Somehow, however, wildebeest still have more worth than caribou, an animal that can’t even seem to handle the task of being hunted. It’s not as though they have superior survival instincts; as we’ve already established, they’re blind and stupid. It just seems that the prevalent predator in the region, the grizzly bear, is simply not interested in eating caribou. Sure, you’ll occasionally see a bear feasting on a caribou carcass, but this is rare. They’re usually more focused on roots, berries, and (in the southern regions) salmon. Maybe caribou don’t taste good…I don’t know. Or maybe bears know how easy it is to kill caribou and are simply bored with the concept. Wolves do hunt caribou more frequently, but there are far fewer wolves than bears in Denali, and wolves have always been social outcasts anyway. I’m convinced the only reason humans allow caribou to continue to exist is due to their role in bringing presents to children around the world on Christmas Eve – yes, Rudolph is technically a caribou. And kids need their toys. So for one night, we label them reindeer and they are the most important animal on the planet. For the other 364 days of the year, they go back to being caribou and worthless.

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When we finally arrived in Denali, I stepped out of the shuttle and took in my surroundings. The actual town of Denali is different from Denali National Park…and really isn’t a town at all. Nobody actually lives there year-round other than the few kooks with cabins in the hills. The closest real town is Healy, 11 miles to the north. Denali is essentially a tourist trap surrounding the entrance to the National Park. The central part of Denali is located in a canyon between two mountains (which, I assume, is how it obtained the local nickname the canyon) through which the only highway in the area passes. Surrounding the highway is a collection of luxurious resorts, overpriced local food joints, a few bars, numerous sightseeing expedition charters that all share the same prefix (Denali Air, Denali Raft Adventures, Denali ATV, etc., etc., etc.), eight billion gift/souvenir shops, one camping store, one Harley Davidson shop, and of course, one gas station.

Mentioning the food joints are overpriced skews the truth a little bit. EVERYTHING in Denali is grossly overpriced. The food, the booze, the souvenirs, the gas, even the stuff inside the gas station. And it’s not just oh man, I wish I didn’t have to spend this much overpriced, it’s after I buy this item, I’ll need to seriously consider where my next meal will come from overpriced. It would be an extremely depressing place if it wasn’t for the wilderness.

Regardless, the Nenana River is the other major factor shaping the greater Denali area. It's a fairly strong current that emerges from the mountains to run along the highway for a couple of miles before disappearing again into the bush. It also runs right by the McKinley Chalet, which was where our shuttle dropped us off. A cushy five-star joint, and our new home for the next three months.

Well…no. Actually, all of the employees stayed in a complex down the hill and behind the ‘Chalet, basically on the banks of the river. It consisted of a number of employee housing buildings, a dining hall, a communal bathroom building, laundry center, and a small rec room which sucked and nobody used. It was like dorms for seasonal workers.

Seasonal workers are an odd type of people. They’re not a different breed; they’re a different animal altogether. There are three general categories:

The first consists of college students and recent college graduates, people who want to experience something new or exciting before they’re shackled to an actual career for the rest of their lives. This group makes up about 40 percent of seasonal workers in most settings. This was me.

The second category is the foreigners. In this particular case, they hailed almost exclusively from Eastern European countries (Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, etc.), and came to America because they could make far more money in a few months than they could in an entire year in their native lands. Most have – or aspire to have – two full-time jobs. This means 16 hours a day…anything else is considered a failure. Foreigners also make up about 40 percent of seasonal workers.

The third group is the most interesting, and usually where the true gems lie. The remaining 20 percent of seasonal employees can be generally classified as older people. Many are in their forties and fifties, and some are even married. They are people who either can’t hold a steady job or have just chosen to move around from place to place every four months for their whole life. Either way, these are clearly not normal people in the commonly accepted sense.

Consider my neighbor, Leopard. I have no idea what his actual name was, because I never spoke to him, but I gave him the unofficial nickname based on the dye pattern in his hair, which I highly doubt was intentional. Leopard was a moderately tall fellow with leathery skin who smoked Camels constantly and appeared to be in his mid-forties. Leopard had an odd habit. Evidently, he felt it necessary to bring his high-wattage stereo system to Alaska to keep him company. Again, I never talked to the man, but I infer he was very proud of this stereo system, especially the subwoofer. This is because every morning around 9 am, Leopard would crank the bass on that rig and blast contemporary Christian tunes as loud as sonically possible. Because the walls in this dorm complex consisted of a quarter-inch of plywood, everyone within five doors of him was taken along on this gospel ride, like it or not. This was annoying, yes, but the odd part was that, by all accounts, Leopard was not a practicing Christian. I know, I know…I wasn’t acquainted with the man, so how would I know what he believed? Well, I’m just basing this on his actions. From what I saw, he wasn’t necessarily a bad person, but definitely not a man of the cloth. For one, he had an infatuation with the meth-addict-looking girl next door, who would often be seen coming and going from Leopard’s room, day and night. Now, I have no idea exactly what they did in his room for all of those hours, but let’s just say his music wasn’t the only noise I heard coming through the wall. Also, after a few weeks of this music ritual, people started to complain…yet Leopard refused to turn it down. There were numerous accounts of young women complaining – even crying – outside his door to no avail. What would DC Talk think about that?

Now, if it sounds like I’m judging the man or accusing him of being a hypocrite, I’m not. I couldn’t care less about his beliefs or the way he lives his life. I just find it a little enlightening to know that I may have found the one person on the face of the earth that isn’t spiritually invested in Christianity, but just really enjoys Christian music. At least that’s what I’d like to believe. It would be groundbreaking.

I never complained to Leopard or asked him to turn the music down. It’s true it irritated me to no end, but I never actually knocked on his door…I just usually put a pillow over my head, which did very little to stop the pains. If this strikes you as irrational, you’ll have to realize that at the time, I was a seasonal worker. And seasonal workers are not rational.

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So Jim and I had arrived at the dorm-like complex in which we would be living, and our first order of business was getting settled into our room (or rooms…the prospect of sharing one hadn’t yet been discussed). We were told to stop by the Human Resources and we did just that; it was the only plausible action to take. It was also the only constructive visit with HR that we would have for the entire summer. They immediately asked if we wanted to live together, effectively putting our fate in our own hands. When this question was posed, Jim and I both looked at each other for a few tense seconds. I saw in his eyes the same look that was undoubtedly in mine: can I really live with this guy for an entire summer without killing him?

Though this may seem strange, I suspect most people have had similar thoughts about their best friends at some point in their lives. As previously noted, Jim and I had always been great friends. But the whole part about not liking any of the same things had the potential to be disastrous for living together. As everyone who has ever had a non-family roommate likely knows, friendships change drastically when you move in with someone. You learn more about them than you’d ever like to know, and you are constantly in contact with them. Sometimes, this strengthens friendships and lifts them to new heights. Other times, it can ruin relationships and make you want to stab your roommate in his or her sleep. Because of our differences, it seemed more likely