A former Stuckey's in Nowhere Land

 So, a bit of a spoiler for upcoming feature content on MyFloridaRetail, but I recently completed a trip out to Polk County to visit two dead malls- Lakeshore Mall in Sebring, and Eagle Ridge Mall in Lake Wales. However, to get there, I first had to brave the untamed wilds.

Clip: Spongebob S1E5a "We're In The Middle of Nowhere!"

While people tend to think of Florida as a carpet of suburbia, developed in all directions, there's large swaths of the state that are basically undeveloped, except for very scattered houses and farms. They're the "flyover country" of Florida, except in our case it's "drive through country". One of the most significant gaps is the area between the Brevard County line and St Cloud in Osceola County where civilization starts to return.

Now, if you swoop south around St Cloud, then you get even more desolation, and you have basically nothing until you hit Lake Wales. Measuring from the outlets on the edge of Vero Beach, to the Dollar General on the outskirts of Alcoma, a town on the edge of Lake Wales, you get just over 60 miles of uninterrupted nothing, the only blips being Yeehaw Junction, a town consisting of a small smattering of houses, two gas stations, two empty concrete pads that were once a motel and a Phillips 66, two highway interchanges (US-441 and FL-91), and the shattered, post-semi truck remains of the historic Desert Bar & Inn, and Indian Lake Estates, a liminal space of a town that in a few short years in the booming 50s, managed to plot over 8,000 lots and fill around 700 of them, leaving the rest to be a super-sized grandfather to later blunders such as The Compound.

These quiet 60 miles lay between you and dead mall joy, and so after rumbling down Babcock St out of Palm Bay until it became just "County Road 507", I hit the road.

and then realized I had less than half a tank. Fuck.

And so, I made my way to the nearest gas station, 20 miles away, a little BP now overshadowed by a brand new Pilot Travel Center built next door.

Here's our main photo, showing the distinctive Stuckey's building, which I was overjoyed to see. I mean, at this point, it coulda been a 1920s shack with one pump and I'd be estatic, but an old Stuckey's is always a joy.

Here's a quick look at the entryway, bearing the busy, non-distinct signage that's a hallmark of gas stations that have traded hands many times.

Now, I do say former Stuckey's, because it's lost all branding, but it did still carry Stuckey's pecan products, so there's still a little bit of it there in spirit. Unfortunately, the interior was completely non-interesting, and also pretty busy, so photos ended up not happening. But I did make some pickups!

Jimmie Stix is a product of the Boyer Candy Company in Altoona, PA- best known for the Mallo Cup, a sort of alt-universe Reeses Cup, with a whipped marshmallow filling surrounded by chocolate. After iterating on that basic pattern for as far as I can tell over 70 years, Boyer found it time to introduce their first new product in over 25 years, Jimmie Stix, a retro styled candy that consists of two (roughly) cylindrical bars of pretzels and peanut butter, covered in chocolate. Honestly, they're quite good, and I wish somewhere closer carried them...

Finally, one other notable thing about this random gas station was it's wide selection of glass bottle sodas! I picked up a few.

Pictured: The Horde

Now, most of these aren't actually from the BP- but they're *in* this photo, excluding a Double Cola I already drank. The pickups from here were:

-Double Cola

-Frostie Vanilla Root Beer

-Grapette

-Cool Mountain Black Cherry

anyway, with all that rambling over, until next time!