Just the 'Fax, man

Thirty miles of developments, drunks and dreams -- the ultimate road trip.

Comments (0) By Laura Bond and Patricia Calhoun and Robin Chotzinoff and Eric Dexheimer and Julie Dunn and Bill Gallo and Amy Haimerl and Jason Heller and Dave Herrera and David Holthouse and Julie Jargon and Marty Jones and Alan Prendergast and Michael Roberts and Jason Sheehan and Stuart Steers and Ernie Tucker Thursday, Jan 22 2004

...continued from page 4

The Lees were guiltless, too, but Kathy's parents and her oldest sister, Diane, still had to fly to Washington, D.C., for a pre-trial hearing. By the time they returned, things had calmed down at the motel. Lee doesn't recall any particular demand for Room 30, the unit Hinckley rented, but she does say weird things seemed to happen there up until her parents sold the motel in 1986. On one occasion (she's not sure if it was before Hinckley's stay or after), she and a maid discovered that a forty-something man had committed suicide in the bathtub, leaving behind only a scattering of cocaine and a spoon.

Paul Kim, who bought the motel over two years ago, hasn't had anyone specifically ask for the Hinckley suite and says he couldn't satisfy such a request even if someone offered to pay more than the going rate of $35 per night "because I don't know which one it is." Indeed, there have been plenty of changes at the Golden Hours since the early '80s. The pool where Lee once played is gone, and all of the room numbers are different, running from "101" through "128," with a "131" thrown in for good measure.

Anthony Camera

Concrete dreams: At Colorado Mills, there's plenty of parking.

Anthony Camera

Shrine of the times: The Virgin watches over Mezcal -- and Colfax.

More About

From Lee's description, though, it seems clear that Room 120, on the motel's second floor, used to be Room 30. Inside it, a maid named Rachel (she keeps her last name to herself) is tidying up with a vengeance; she tosses a pair of old phone books out the open door to the pavement below, where they land with a thwap! After saying she's clueless about Hinckley's stay at the Golden Hours, she heads to another room while giving casual permission to visit the one she left behind -- and a lovely space it is. Green and blue carpeting with occasional stains and tears. Twin beds with floral covers that sort of match the thick, multi-colored curtains over the adjacent window, but not really. A gold lamp with a dusty beige shade. A phone with a piece of duct tape on the cord. A light-red armchair covered in smudges. And nothing at all on the walls -- not even a plaque commemorating the room's one confirmed celebrity occupant.

The McDonald's doesn't sport any references to Hinckley, either -- and, even worse, the distinctive saddle seats are gone. But at least the store manager, Denese Klocker, is up to speed on the Golden Hours-Hinckley connection, having heard Lee talk about it on the Fox during a live remote at nearby Lakewood Fordland in December. Days later, the ruling allowing Hinckley's unsupervised trips from the hospital was announced, and Klocker found it "kind of scary," she says. "This is his old hunting ground. What if he were to walk in here? I wouldn't even know him."

Neither would anyone else in the neighborhood. John Hinckley's gone, and he's mostly forgotten. -- Michael Roberts

10:30 a.m.: National Temporaries, Inc.,
410 East Colfax

"Work Daily, Pay Daily" reads the grimy, battered sign above the door. The McDonald's across the street has already stopped serving breakfast, so you know it's getting late in the morning -- indeed, too late to snag the best pick of temp jobs at this day-labor service, where men are loaded into vans and, under the pretense of pruning trees or sweeping floors, probably shanghaied to some underground bunker and shot full of extraterrestrial strains of anthrax. No such luck for the eight down-at-the-heels guys watching TV in the cramped lobby of National Temporaries, feet propped up on dirty knapsacks, staring numbly at what appears to be a battalion of midget KKK members storm-trooping the set of Jerry Springer. They're waiting for a job to come through. They may sit here all day, waiting, ears tuned to the voice of the dispatcher at the front desk, equipped as it is with that sole, indispensable piece of office apparatus: a lava lamp.

Of course, there's no guarantee these people will get any work at all today, but at least it's quiet and warm and dark in this storefront, the former home of Colorado Comics. The huge windows are now covered with sheets of black paper instead of X-Men posters. There are also memos taped up beside the door offering assignments: one looking for carpenters, another for, specifically, ladies with "printing experience." The most curious of all, though, is a piece of paper that reads: "People with laundry experience needed. Must have good attitude and be neat and clean." On the floor directly below, someone is airing out a pair of decrepit brown boots that look like they've been trashed by a bulldozer for the last three weeks. And in a loop of ironic self-reference straight out of Catch-22, there's a notice on the wall requesting the services of a new dispatcher -- a position for which none of the men lounging under a large "No Loitering" sign is apparently considered qualified for. -- Jason Heller

11 a.m.: Lafarge Spec. Aggregates,
19301 West Colfax

You could look long and hard before you came up with an operation manlier than rock mining. Dynamite the granite out of the mountain. Truck it down the hill to the giant cone-and-jaw crushers. Slam it into smaller chunks, from the finest dust to six-foot boulders. Load the pieces, up to 80,000 pounds at a time, onto rigs to be hauled all over the state and used in road construction, landscaping and riprap for flood control.