Red Mountain Lodge (Part 1, the sign)

My brothers and I were browsing around behind the abandoned Red Mountain Lodge, a business our family sold over a quarter century ago.  It had gone slowly downhill since then, and now pretty much smells of packrat pee.  It was hard to see our childhood home come to this, but it was a good move to sell it when we did, and we're all three rather comfortable now.

None of us has to get up at 2 a.m. and sign in a drunk.  There's value in that.

We came across this really ugly old sign.  I asked the owner if we could have it.  No problem, he said.

Horrible as the thing looked, I knew under that yellow and red paint there was something special . . .

An heirloom.

 Something in green, red, black and white.

Gimme a T . . .

By golly, I think it's

a six-foot tall, enamel Texaco sign!

During the 50s, 60s and 70s, my parents built up a motel, gas station and gift shop in the stunning setting of Ouray, Colorado.  My 78-year-old mom still has the shop running, the motel - well, you'll be hearing more about that.  The Texaco station closed down when I, the youngest son, decided a real career wouldn't be such a bad move after all.

When Texaco brought us a new sign in the mid-70s, they let us keep the old sign.  Dad said we could paint over it and make it into a gift shop sign.  I objected, but I fairly bristled with bad judgment at that age, so it became the thing you see in the first photo.  But I remembered what was underneath, and I jumped at the opportunity to retrieve it.

My folks had a firm belief in self reliance.  They expected us to go to college, but they weren't about to pay for it.  What they did do was invest about $700 to build an A-frame on the vacant land across the road from the Lodge, and this became a gas station, where each brother in turn would earn his money for college, helped by the younger brother who would work for cheap to earn his own turn at the helm.  Every time we look at this sign, volumes of memories will stream back.  I'm not sure which wall it's going on, but it's going on a wall at the place we all meet up for the 4th of July - all 6 feet of it.

You can't put a price on something like that.

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If you'd like to read the whole series, search on the tag "rml".