Approaching town, the asphalt covered path took on the appearance of old pavement referred to elsewhere (Route 66 near Miami, Oklahoma, for example) as "sidewalk highway". By the time it reached the city limits, it was really looking like a bike trail with downsized stop and yield signs and it had completely morphed into a normal city sidewalk before much more distance had passed.

Showtown was a minor disappointment. When I was here in 2008, artist Bill Browning was still "in residence" and his murals fresh and maintained. Now many are faded and some have even disappeared in some remodeling. Three people sat around the corner from me at the bar. I eventually determined that the woman in the middle was an off duty employee and the man to her right was her husband. The other fellow reminded me a little of Clark Griswold's cousin Eddie. (We had watched Christmas Vacation on Christmas Eve.) I came in in the middle of him telling a story about visiting Ronnie Van Zant's grave while he was working and driving his loaded beer truck into the cemetery. At the end of the story, he punched up Give Me Back My Bullets on the juke box and sang along with every word. I think he did that with just about every song that played while I was there. While "Eddie" was singing and telling more stories, the husband was watching a friend's music videos on his phone with the tiny & tinny speaker on. THAT, folks, is entertainment.

I obviously wasn't going to get much information out of my neighbors and I never really got anything resembling a conversation going with either of the long haired bartenders. I did find a Huffington Post story from earlier in 2014 that also spoke of the fading of Showtown USA. Even so, I had a good patty melt and some really good fresh cut fries for my last meal of the year, washed it down with a couple of draft Buds, and headed back to end the year in Bradenton. I went to sleep about the time they were celebrating New Year in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.