Read time: 5 min.

It’s funny how routines imprint themselves. I lived with my dad when I was sixteen, and every morning went exactly the same way: up at 5:30, downstairs so my stepmom could shower upstairs, peanut butter toast, then Steve Duval and Elizabeth Colosimo on the WSJV morning news. I hated how that was brainlessly enforced day after day! Nearly twenty years later, though, it makes more sense thanks to Muncie’s Meijer Express. 

I don’t remember why I started going to Muncie’s Meijer gas station so many years ago. It was close to my house, but others were closer. The gas station didn’t have direct access to eastbound McGalliard Road, which made it inconvenient to reach. Still, I started stopping there, and somehow I never really stopped. I’ve been going daily -or sometimes more than daily- for about fifteen years! Since then, several current and former employees have become real friends beyond the few minutes it takes me to buy a drink or fill up my car.

For a while, though, my mornings stopped lining up with Meijer’s schedule. During the pandemic, I took a job as the quality guy at the factory that makes Ball jar lids. My shift started at four in the morning, then moved to three after I became a supervisor. Meijer and its gas station had traditionally been round-the-clock operations, but COVID changed that. Suddenly, I had to be at work long before the gas station opened. That sounds like a tiny inconvenience, but it felt enormous at the time. 

The Ball closure plant represented a collection of firsts for me: my first factory job, my first quality job, my first twelve-hour shift, my first time working with a union, and my first gig that reported at an hour when most people were still asleep. I’d taken the job out of desperation, and nearly everything about my daily life changed at once. Having somewhere familiar to stop on the way would have helped my transition, but I started going to Village Pantry- namely the one on Muncie’s White River Boulevard.

When I was a kid and Marsh still owned Village Pantry, this was basically the flagship. When the 4,500-square-foot store opened, it featured fresh-baked foods, a deli, pizza, and broasted chicken you could eat in an actual dining room beneath a glass atrium¹! Unfortunately, private equity got ahold of Marsh in 2006² and split Village Pantry off into its own division³. Since then, even the nicest Village Pantry stores have been dirty and cluttered with indifferent employees. They’re not especially pleasant places to stop, especially compared to Meijer.

Case in point: one morning at the Pantry pictured above, I asked the cashier how his shift was going as he rang me up. “Good,” he said, “since you’ll be my last customer.” He proceeded to tell me how much he hated his job and that he was quitting that morning. I asked if he could wait before one final credit card got rung up and he let me pay. Sure enough, then, he followed me outside, locked the door behind us, got in his car, and drove away. He didn’t even turn off the lights! 

Another Village Pantry closer to work -since converted into an independent operation- provided a different kind of early-morning entertainment. Once, around two-thirty, the crack pipe belonging to the guy in line ahead of me fell out of his hoodie pocket while he waited to check out. I’m not a crack-smoker myself, and I’m not someone who counts it as part of my life. Maybe I’m sheltered, but seeing that was jarring.

I really missed the Meijer Express on my morning commute. It’s always clean, bright, and well-stocked. If there are any crackheads wandering around its rural surrounds at six in the morning, they’ve at least had the courtesy to keep their paraphernalia securely stowed.

Once I started my new job, I went right back to Meijer, even though it’s still out of the way. These days, I start work at seven, which means I can pull into the gas station right around six when the doors open. I buy my energy drinks and bottled water, fill up when I need gas, and spend a few minutes chatting with the friends I’ve known for years. Then I head to work.

My sixteen-year-old self would be horrified to learn how much comfort I eventually found in doing the same thing at the same time every morning. Back then, routine felt like something imposed on me. Now it’s something I’ve chosen for myself, and there’s a difference! At six in the morning, when the lights are on at Meijer and the same familiar faces are behind the counter, everything just seems right.

Sources Cited
1 Cheesman, M. (1995, June 15). Village Pantry to open soon. The Muncie Star Press. p. 16. 
2 Sun Capital Partners Affiliate Completes Acquisition of Marsh Supermarkets (2006, September 27). Sun Capital Partners [Boca Raton]. Web. Retrieved September 24, 2026. 
3 Galer, S. (2007, May 4). Village Pantry breaks off from Marsh. WTHR [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved September 24, 2026.