Betty’s father put up the money for the building and liquor license. Six years and two children later, John left her—went off to start a new life in Grand Rapids with a woman he had met in a Traverse City bar. Jack Grochoski had wanted to be in the military when he graduated from Fordson High in Dearborn, but his uncle got him a foundry job at Fords (as they say in Dearborn). He worked there until a long strike, coming north for deer season and then deciding never to return to his foundry job at River Rouge. He built a small cabin south of Empire, fished, hunted, trapped, and eventually became the evening bartender at the Last Chance. During one long winter, he and Betty—more out of loneliness than any real attraction—were lovers. Later, she married a car dealer from Kalkaska and sold Jack the Last Chance. Jack stood behind the bar washing glasses and surveying afternoon customers. The bar had changed little in his years there. The knotty cedar on the walls had darkened with age, the color change seen when old beer signs were taken down, leaving rectangles, ovals and squares of yellow cedar on the umber walls.
