The Gas Station Movie Section

There is nothing that I miss more about movies than being able to peruse the selection of movies that gas stations have failed to sell over the years. I went out of town with my wife recently and she asked me what took me so long buying a few drinks for the road. After buying everything we needed for the drive, I took a moment to scope the entire floor and felt a tinge of sadness that this gas station showed no trace of any movies. I briefly considered going to the manager, who had just checked out my items, and sheepishly asking why there weren't any DVDs being sold, but my anxiety whispered in my ear and told me the truth, "That man doesn't care about stocking DVDs".

I used to drive across the United States to visit friends quite a bit in my early twenties. As a result, I spent quite a bit of time needing to stretch my legs after locked into place for hours on end. These movie sections were a source of entertainment for me as I compared the titles remaining on the shelves, seeing if I recognized anything. I never intended on purchasing any, but I remember seeing The Convoy Collection on the shelf and feeling a compulsion to indulge in this bootleg experience - I did a lot of things as a joke, and this was one of those situations.

I have spent a lot of money on movies and hate the fact that I haven't invested equal energy to watch them. I mentioned in my last post that I lost my last database created to catalogue my movies and TV shows, as I have lost many more, but it wasn't until my latest venture that I became serious about using collection management software. The software is very much a godsend! The developers include the ability to search various databases for information to include with the movie in the database and this functionality showed me that these movies included with the Convoy Collection are mislabeled. The misattribution is ever so slight, but slight enough that I was forced to do some detective work.

Trucker's Women is actually Trucker's Woman, but more confusingly has also been released as Truckin' Man. Moonfire Trucker is Moonfire [sic], a movie with a delightful sounding premise of truck drivers fighting Nazis in Mexico. The Concrete Cowboy  is simply Concrete Cowboys, aka Highway Action, aka Nashville Detective, aka Ramblin' Man - a Tom Selleck & Jerry Reed movie that seems fairly decent from what little I can gather.

I truly do miss the loss of the gas station movie section, but I do recognize the unattractiveness of items that do not sell to individuals responsible for financial success of a business already operating at paper-thin margins. Realizing the loss of the DVD bins/shelves at my local gas stations gave me a tinge of sadness, giving me a sense of melancholy as I remember VHS phasing out early in my childhood, the rise of the DVD and the supremacy of Blu-Ray over HD DVDs. I don't know if I'll ever watch these movies, but I do appreciate them being bundled together if not for the rabbit hole that properly tagging them in my current database sent me down and the recollection of memories that I had purchasing them. Time does march on, maybe a little faster than I would like.