| Mile marker 53, Highway 60. If you go, you’ll find things that used to be, boarded-up concrete gravestones for the dreams that died here. Some are obvious… the peeling paint on the Mexican restaurant sign, the fallen donkey cutout of the Burro Bar, the cracked empty pool of the Moonlight Motel. Some aren’t so obvious… and the only way to see them is to close your eyes. Maybe a little girl once stood at the edge of that pool, toes curled over the coping. She raised her hands to the sky, held her breath and leapt into the air, and for that eternal moment before hitting the water, she was Dorothy Hamill in the Olympics. A perfect 10. A few breaths down the road you’ll find the Little Church of Hope, the only building that doesn’t have plywood over every opening. The gravel parking lot is groomed, the white stucco walls free of the dust plastered to neighboring facades. Maybe you’re not a religious person. But maybe you’ll pull the truck over and kill the engine, anyway. Because this place doesn’t need a story to inject life into the cracks… this place is alive, with arms of white pine holding a sign that says Travelers Welcome. And that’s what you are. A weary traveler, so focused on some other destination that you’ve forgotten all you really have is this one, right here. Mile marker 53, Highway 60. |
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