Thanksgiving at the Chill n'Fill gas station doesn't come with Norman Rockwell paintings—it comes with salt-stained floor mats, a twenty-foot winking polar bear mascot wearing a beanie that reads "GRATEFUL" (rain-smudged to just "ATE"), and Cindy working the night shift while the rest of Buzzard Roost, Alabama celebrates around proper tables. What starts as another lonely holiday manning Pump #3 transforms into something unexpectedly profound as a parade of misfits, stragglers, and in-betweeners drift through: a grandmother bearing homemade apple pie as "combat pay for dealing with people," a teenager filming content to avoid sitting home alone, a divorced dad sharing gas station cupcakes with his kids, a girl in a green dress fleeing a family blow-up, and a man in a full turkey costume buying ibuprofen after surviving fifteen toddlers at children's ministry. Through it all, the sentient radio at 96.6 WDAR plays impossibly perfect songs—from Bill Withers to Sam Cooke to Louis Armstrong—while offering cheeky ads for "Buzzard Dust Cigarettes" and "Cokehead Bright" light bulbs, punctuated by cryptic warnings that if the polar bear winks twice, someone behind you needs you to stay. By closing time, Cindy realizes the bear's double-wink was meant for her all along, and she finally sits down to eat that grandmother's pie while understanding that sometimes the most human Thanksgiving moments don't happen at crowded tables but at quiet gas stations where lonely people find unexpected grace under flickering parking lot lights.
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