An honest inquiry about American religious practices: 🦫 On the highway to Austin, my friend told me we were making a quick stop for fuel. We arrived at a compound with one hundred and twenty gas pumps. In the center stood a six-foot bronze idol of a smiling beaver wearing a red ballcap. A family was kneeling before the rodent, taking photographs in reverence. Inside, across seventy thousand square feet of marble floor, three hundred Americans were chanting in unison. A man in a butcher's apron slammed a cleaver into smoked meat and bellowed: "FRESH BRISKET ON THE BOARD!" The congregation roared like warriors entering battle and surged toward the altar. The restrooms were cleaner than the Emperor’s tea pavilion. Every stall had a heavy oak door that reached the floor. Is Buc-ee's a gas station, or have Texans built a secret temple to a benevolent rodent god?