Keeping the Lights On

Every year, right around the first of October, I make my way up to Central City. The air changes before anything else does — thinner, sharper, like it’s been filtered through stone and time. It’s not just cooler up there. It’s cleaner somehow. Quieter, too, in a way that settles into you if you let it.

They used to call this place the richest square mile on earth. Men came fast when the law allowed it, pulled silver and gold from the mountain until there wasn’t enough left to chase. Then, just as fast, they were gone. What remains is a kind of echo — streets, buildings, a few stubborn lights still burning against the dark.

That’s part of what keeps me coming back.

My spot is a small bank of nickel slot machines by the window at Easy Street Casino. Nothing fancy. You won’t win much there, and that’s kind of the point. The losing comes easy. The drinks don’t cost you anything. And the world you came from — the schedules, the noise, the weight of things — doesn’t seem to follow you all the way up the hill.

“Keeping the lights on” is what I call it. Not in any official sense. Just my own way of saying I’m there to give a little back, to take a seat in the quiet and let the reels spin. A few nickels at a time feels about right for a town that gave everything it had a long time ago.

I sit there longer than I probably should. Watching the light shift in the window. Listening to the machines hum like a distant memory of the work that once filled those hills. And somewhere in that rhythm, I find a kind of peace that doesn’t show up easily anywhere else.

That’s where the song came from.

Not from winning. Not from losing.

Just from sitting still long enough to hear the place breathe — and deciding, for a little while, to help keep the lights on.