The Vending Machine Never Talks

A Tale of Midnight Mistakes and Small-Town Justice

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following account was found scribbled on the back of seventeen gas station receipts and what appears to be a classified threat assessment matrix.

The author claims all events are true, though several witnesses suggest he was high on sleep deprivation and righteous teenage indignation at the time.

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In small towns, reputation is like spilled diesel—fast, staining, and nobody wants to handle the cleanup.

One minute, you’re a stand-up guy; the next, a “potential petroleum terrorist.”

2001 was a bizarre time to guard Steve “The Octane Overlord” Chale's gas station empire—if by empire you meant one temperamental pump and a vending machine that treated coins like personal insults.

While the nation twisted itself into a paranoid pretzel of fear and finger-pointing, I learned a more brutal truth. I spent those nights in a basement where darkness lived like a pet, something you fed with teenage angst and Cool Ranch Doritos, where shadows had shadows and even the spiders needed night-vision goggles.

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CLASSIFIED ADDENDUM A: Local conspiracy theorists would later suggest the basement was actually a CIA black site. Evidence cited included "weird noises" that were definitely a tired furnace and not, as suggested, encrypted communications with sleeper cells.

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I don’t recall wondering if my mom thought I was sneaking out at night. The logistics alone would've required military-grade planning and equipment I couldn't afford on my gas station salary, not to mention the front door that sounded like seven seagulls under assault.

But one man in town had made it his mission to crack the case of What's Adam Up To Now?

Deputy John Novacek, a man whose sheriff's badge ambition burned brighter than his flashlight during the thousand-and-one times he'd cruise past our house at night.

“Adam, there’s a cop at the door,” Mom said, her tone carrying that unique mix of resignation and preparation every small-town mother masters after raising three kids in a place where reputations spread faster than hotdish recipes at a Lutheran potluck.

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CLASSIFIED ADDENDUM B: Deputy Novacek would later deny that these events directly inspired his "Tough on Gas Station Crime" platform.

However, campaign posters featuring him wrestling a giant fuel pump would suggest otherwise.

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Mom had been through this before—different cops, different misunderstandings.

But this time felt different. Post-9/11 different. The kind of different that made small-town authorities see sleeper cells behind every gas pump while mothers question their sons’ late-night routines.

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Novacek had been building his case for weeks.

Locals started noticing his Impala parked across from the gas station during my shifts, steam from his suspicions fogging up the windows, his government-issue pen scratching conspiracy theories into a notebook that smelled like stale coffee and desperation.

Probably thought he was being subtle, but in a town where the most exciting thing to happen in the past decade was the grocery store getting a new ice cream freezer, a cop doing stakeouts at the local gas station was about as inconspicuous as a combine in a kiddie parade.

The deputy settled into questioning. This wasn't just an investigation to him—this was his pilot episode, his big break, his "Law & Order: Small Town Petroleum Unit" moment.

"Where were you last night, Adam?" He delivered the line with the dramatic weight of a man who practiced interrogations in his bathroom mirror, probably while his wife wondered why the electric bill kept spiking from all the mood lighting experiments.

"In my basement black hole, as usual," I replied, still adjusting to consciousness and this sudden starring role in Novacek's imaginary primetime special.

He pressed on, grilling me like Congress working over the Corleones, only with less evidence and more small-town desperation.

"So you're telling me," Novacek pressed, his voice taking on the manic edge of a man who'd microdosed his morning coffee with something more robust than Coffee-mate, "that you weren't casing the joint while pumping gas?"

I couldn't help but laugh. The idea of "casing" the gas station where I worked was like planning a heist at your grandmother's house—sure, there might be some valuable cookie recipes in there, but was it worth the risk of getting hit with a wooden spoon?

Each question felt less like law enforcement and more like a man auditioning for a role he'd already cast himself in.

"How do you explain the timing?"

“And your inside knowledge of Steve’s janky lock system?”

“Peanut butter—long-lasting, coats the gut— the ideal crime fuel, right?”

Reality TV wasn’t a thing yet in 2001, but there on our front lawn, Sheriff John was already pioneering his own series: CSI: Small-Town Syndicates, playing on an endless loop while Mom and I traded bewildered looks.

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CLASSIFIED ADDENDUM C: Later pitched to NBC as "Small Town Justice: Tales of a Silent Vending Machine."

Remarkably, they didn't call back.

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The case against me came straight from Novacek’s fever dream.

My former boss was convinced I’d orchestrated an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist, using my vast network of teenage masterminds and intimate knowledge of his perpetually broken vending machine.

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CLASSIFIED ADDENDUM D: The vending machine would later be cleared of any involvement in the crime, though it remained suspiciously broken.

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How does one appropriately respond to accusations of candy bar larceny while still half-asleep? Even mobsters got coffee before their hearings, but here I was, grilled like a diner special without so much as a courtesy Cup-O-Joe.

“So, where’s your room in this dump?” Novacek had his notepad out, probably sketching the cover for The Peanut Butter Files: How Deputy John Novacek Solved the Crime That Rocked Small-Town America.

“Well, the place is nearly a hundred years old, and I’ve misplaced the blueprints, but last I checked, I’ve been holed up in that basement for the last decade.”

Like Steve’s gas station coffee, my patience had gone bitter.

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“This isn’t funny, Kuznia.”

Novacek’s voice had morphed into something between R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket and a PBS telethon host mid-existential crisis.

The acid-tinged interrogation intensified: “What about Chale? He says you were studying the place while pumping gas. ‘The whole thing was a front,’ he says. ‘Paid him eight bucks an hour to case my station!’”

Ah, yes. Steve.

My former employer turned star prosecution witness in The People vs. The Phantom Oil Filter Bandit.

The man who trusted me with his ancient cash register now believed I’d masterminded a heist using my insider knowledge of his vending machine’s broken snack lever.

“Can’t win these days,” I muttered, watching Novacek’s pupils dilate, hopefully from caffeine and not whatever cocktail of paranoia and creatine they were serving at the sheriff’s department.

Eventually, his detective fantasy sputtered out, losing steam like a bathroom key tethered to a hubcap.

Justice, however slow, finally came home. H.W. Diaz—Steve’s actual employee—was our Gas Guzzling Bandit, operating under the collective noses of our town’s finest amateur sleuths.

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CLASSIFIED ADDENDUM E: Diaz would later admit the vending machine peanut butter cups were "just okay" and "not worth the hassle.”

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Novacek's response to this revelation was roughly as substantial as Steve's coffee— pure vapor. The man who'd channeled every TV cop from Columbo to Kojak during my interrogation suddenly developed selective amnesia.

Not a word, a peep, or even a "my bad, bro" etched on the back of a parking ticket.

Chale's apology came the way most small-town apologies do—sideways and wrapped in qualifiers.

Not even a complimentary tire repair for my troubles.

Steve shuffled across Highway 75 like a man crossing himself in church—practiced movements masking guilt—his oil-stained jeans carrying more conviction than his voice when he finally spoke.

"The timing," he mumbled, studying his boots like they held the secrets to adequately calibrated gas pumps, "was just too perfect..."

I smiled and polished the "WRONGFULLY ACCUSED" decal on my Chevy K10's bug deflector. Nothing says "vindication," like vinyl lettering on smoked plastic, catching the sunlight just right as you toodle past the sheriff's office.

Then, because no small-town story dies easy: "But you gotta admit, it did look suspicious..."

That's the deal with small-town narratives—they stick to you like grease under fingernails.

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Twenty years later, there are probably still old-timers at the coffee shop who remember me as "that Kuznia kid who might've been up to something at the gas station that one time."

The damage was done, and another chapter was added to the legend of Sheriff John "The Petroleum Persecutor" Novacek.

On quiet nights, they say you can still hear him practicing his tough-guy act in the mirror, probably wondering if selling his soul was worth the county big seat.

The gas station still stands, its vending machine eternally broken—a monument to small-town paranoia and stories that refuse to die.

And me? I’m just another kid who learned that in places like this, you don’t get to write your own story.

But maybe, through these words, I can help someone else wrestle back theirs.

I wonder how many kids like me are out there, carrying the weight of small-town stories they never asked for.

How many morning coffees got poisoned by whispered maybe’s and could-have-beens?

How many dreams stunted by reputations built on nothing more noteworthy than convenience store coffee?

That’s why I write—not to clear old records or settle scores, but because somewhere out there, another teenager is getting wrapped in someone else’s narrative, watching their future rewritten by people too busy playing their main character to see the damage they’re causing.

Like that broken vending machine, sometimes the truth just needs someone stubborn enough to mash buttons until something shakes loose.

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CLASSIFIED ADDENDUM F: Sources suggest the vending machine finally broke its silence in 2023, claiming it never saw a thing.

Unfortunately, it still owes me three bucks in quarters.