Last Chance Lament

Last Chance, I passed through you many times and remember you. You sit on the Colorado Prairie east of Denver at the intersection of two, two lane highways. In the 1880's you were a stop along the great Texas Montana Cattle Trail. You really came into your own as a child of the post war Forty's and Fifty's automobile boom. The say you once were a lively little town made up of gas stations, motels, cafes, a general store, two churches and several homes. Word has it, you got your name because you were the last chance for travelers to get gas, food and lodging on their long treks to Denver and Kansas. In summer, travelers picked cold Cokes, Pepsis and Grape NeHi's out of your gas stations' iced filled soda chests. In winter, hot steaming coffee flowed from the silver urns of your cafes. It was Fords, Plymouths, and Chevrolets that created you, and it was Interstate Highway 70 that bypassed and doomed you to whither and slowly die. A prairie fire in 2012 caused by the sparks of a tire blowout finished you off. Today you are a ghost town of burnt out hulks, abandoned buildings and distant memoires. Oh, Last Chance. The stories you could tell.