Limon, Colorado         Driving east to west through Kansas, avoiding the interstates and toll roads, is an interesting roll, that I coupled with a couple of hours on the big highway to get to Limon, the self-proclaimed “hub city,” eighty miles out of Denver and about the same from Colorado Springs.  Perhaps hard for some to believe who have only flown over this part of the country, but east and central Kansas is actually pretty country with farms stretched out over rolling, low hills.  From the road, the farms and ranches look healthy, the towns, when they appear seem sick and dying.

This is Trump country, even if it’s hard to see why, given the issues they face that are so foreign to him.  Old, broken down 18-wheel trailers seem to have found another lease on life as semi-permanent Trump billboards, some for 2020 and one for 2024.  Some of this was just old school.  I even passed an old Burma Shave multiple sign ad.  I’m not even sure if Burma Shave still exists to tell the truth, but in many ways time means less and may have stopped in some of these areas.

I’m looking for tower locations for a construction permit for a noncommercial radio station assigned to Limon, Colorado.  The hub once meant railroads, but now the town touts the fact that it is an intersection of a half-dozen different state and federal highways and Interstate 70.  Around the highway exits and entrances there was a bit of bustle and some things open, but Main Street seems more closed down than opened up.  There’s a tower in the middle of town, but I’ll have to research who and what owns it.  There’s a small antenna on top of a grain silo in town, but it’s at a lower height.  I’ll have to look around more.

Almost surprisingly, the town’s municipal building looks new.  So does the high school and the library.  Something is happening here, and it’s good.  This is the largest town in the county and a center of sorts around this area, and they are taking it seriously. Houses are interspersed with manufactured homes.  Lot of trucks are driving through and parked in town, making their case as a hub.

Limon has a museum at the old railroad station.  There’s a fishing pond here in the middle of this huge plains grassland where buffalo once roamed.  A small nature trail wrapped around a grassy-wetlands where redwing blackbirds flew in and out.  There were raccoon tracks.  A young woman walked her dog.  Two teens were throwing a football in the parking area.  A young couple was holding hands and walking on the trail.   Welcome to America, wherever you want to find it.

To pull people together in this divided country means going out, meeting people, listening to their issues, and understanding why we have to engage all America, not just some of the parts.