Buford Trading Post has DIED!!!

Stopped at Buford, WY for the night last night and was looking forward to seeing the Trading Post and visiting with Don.  Wwweelllllllllllllllllll........that hope was dashed when I got into the parking lot last night. There are NO signs saying Trading Post any longer. It has been painted all brown and tan. They don't have any mainline gas in their pumps any longer.  Sooooo....when I got up this morning I went inside once they finally opened up....and boy, was I amazed! 

The place is now called "Phen Deli, Town Buford".....what deli?? There is no deli. There is coffee.....Vietnam imported....did you know that Vietnam is supposed to be the 2nd largest exporter of coffee in the world?  All the "tourist" stuff that dealt with Buford, the Wild West, the Native Americans, Wyoming, etc are basically all gone.

Such a sad day....apparently the buyers of the business when the auction went off a little over a year ago, are from Vietnam. I have no idea of what life over there is like now....but they turned a place that had its own history into just another interstate quickshop that really basically has not independent personality.  Not to mention that I was definitely not impressed with the customer service.

So another minor icon in the American past has passed away!  But I'm not sure that there are any "minor icons" when it comes to where we have been and where we are and where we are headed!  It seems like we just have to hurry into the now and future and damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead....no matter what the road looks like that is in front of us.

In the far west, which is where I am right now, the past is still sitting on the sides of the road, you can see it as you roll along, the weather here lets it stay in one piece for MANY years....yet we roar on by and look at it and say....."dang, I remember when I used to stop there".....and then run to the next exit and bustle into the overglorified "travel center" that is supposed to be a truck stop/gas station/"gift shop"......ahh, the lies we tell ourselves!