THE LAST KMART in the Mountain time zone is now just a memory.  It was located in Hamilton, Montana and closed in early March 2022.  That leaves only five remaining in the country, from a once-prominent big box retail / discount / department chain that was synonymous with low-priced merchandise.

For the benefit of those who never experienced them, and may therefore be innocent of the term, KMart stores would offer brief, ephemeral sales within some department of the store.  The department could be identified by a flashing blue light.  There would be an announcement over the PA, along the lines of "Attention KMart Shoppers: for the next five minutes, we're offering six widgets for the price of two and a half in our Whatnot and Miscellany Department.  Come to the flashing blue light to get yours."  

The flashing blue light was a revolving light, similar to the type once found on police cars and other emergency vehicles, mounted on a pole attached to a moveable cart.  The store employees would wheel the cart to the sale location, activate it, and broadcast their announcement.  These sales were therefore dubbed "Blue Light Specials" and were, so far as I know, a custom unique to KMart.

There was a KMart a few miles from home when I was a kid, and my buddies and I would save our allowances for weeks or months then make regular bicycle excursions to the wonderland.  We'd head straight for their toys department, where we could find styrene plastic model kits of cars and, even more appealing, semi trucks.

We somehow tacitly divided the domain of Big Rigs among ourselves: one of us built nothing but Kenworth models, another Peterbilt, and my special niche was Mack.  We were a bit less rigid when it came to trailers: so long as none of us built the same kit as any of the others they were all fair game.

In addition to the kits themselves we could obtain all of the necessary related products: plastic model cement, paint ("Testor's" was the most common brand going), fill putty, sandpaper, and so forth.  I spent many happy hours poring over the instructions, going through the kit to find the pieces, detaching them from the "tree" that was created during the molding process, cleaning and trimming the mold marks, applying the glue, and attaching the parts to the growing assembly, and so forth.  

My friends' father was a genius with a spray can and airbrush, meaning that their models always came out neat and trim and looking very well-done.  Mine, on the other hand, had the distinct look of having been assembled by a young man with little patience and a dubious talent for painting.  But I loved them, none the less.

On our way out of the store with our newly acquired treasures, whatever remained of our carefully hoarded allowances often ended up being spent on candy and bubble gum.  Then the cycle would repeat itself over the next few months.

All of that has now passed, but I remember it fondly.

I passed through Hamilton today but didn't see the empty husk.