As a boy, he ran away from his impoverished village in India to escape poverty, and spent years traveling in search of work before a chance encounter with a visiting couple from Houston, Texas, led to his immigration to the U.S. His American life didn't follow the dream he'd imagined: he worked at various points as an engineer at Boeing, a children's-clothing and medical-supply salesman, a Denny's manager, a struggling gift-shop owner, and a night-shift gas station attendant in Texas — the job that gives the film its title, though it was only one chapter of a longer, restless working life.
