Day 5 - 4/8/2017 - 489.6 miles to Enid, OK

It was a long day. We have covered a total of 2,132.5 miles so far and we spent the night in Enid, Oklahoma so we are over halfway across the country.

We started in the morning in Limon, Colorado which is about an hour east of Denver on I-70. From there we headed south on two-lane state an US highways to the town of Lamar, Colorado, the family home of the Hardin clan. We went to the cemetery and found the graves of Vickie's grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Limon, Colorado on the old Santa Fe Trail

As we passed through the small towns of America yesterday what we saw was fairly consistent. Still alive, but struggling, for the most part. Some doing better then others, to be sure, but vacant storefronts told the story of business space that had not been filled for a while. Sometimes quite a long while.

As we moved eastward into Kansas on US 50 the story was the same. Some old oil wells dotted farms occasionally, but they were not pumping. Different from what we saw in the oil areas of Utah and Colorado.

Grain elevator in southern Kansas

I've been looking for the road signs about drug treatment, etc that I mentioned before, but have seen none. As we moved closer to Dodge City we saw increasing numbers of grain elevators, but many of those elevators were connected to stockyards processing beef. Lots of stockyards with lots of cows, but confined into holding areas unlike the beef country in Oregon where the cattle graze in open fields and range land.

Dodge City? The heroic outpost of the old west? Don't waste your time. Some made for tourists displays, but nothing even mildly interesting.

Continuing eastward and southward towards Oklahoma sunset and night were fast approaching. More and more little towns, different from each other, but the same: Inactivity.

It was Saturday night for crying out loud. Nothing. No traffic. Most bars and restaurants closed, or a couple of cars. Virtually no traffic on the highways. We might go 5 to 10 miles and barely see any cars. No one on the streets. Three teens in a convenience store parking lot, vaping. That was it.

Emptiness is the visual manifestation of the malaise in the heartland of America.

Passing houses in the streets you might see the glow of a TV on the windows, but no activity. Just a stillness of life. Young people nowhere to be seen.

Feedlot outside Dodge City

There are a lot of things going on sociologically. The flight of  youth to "better" places has been going on for a long time. Mechanization of farms, meant much bigger farms with less people needed to run them. No young people, no partying on Saturday Night. 

There are plenty of religious radio stations filling the airwaves. My guess is that Sunday Morning church provides the social cohesion for the vast number of people in this rural part of the country. The day-to-day lifestyle is far removed from the more urban lifestyles that emerge from larger cities. My own guesstimate is that "urban" attitudes begin emerge when the town population starts creeping up to around 30,000. 

80% of people live in urban areas in the US. A portion of that number represents those rural folks who have relocated to where jobs and opportunity exist and brought those rural values with them, at least until they they move towards the more "liberal" culture that is a hallmark of urban life.

For the last year, following politics as deeply as I do, I have come to see the political divide in this nation as less liberal versus conservative, but more urban versus rural.

Dying is probably an overstatement of what is happening in rural cities, because most of the small ones we have seen have been there for well over 100 years or more, and they are still there. It feels more like stasis - an equilibrium. The towns will marginally survive, but not grow unless some outside force brings in the growth. There are just enough people to provide the needed labor and services for the surrounding farms and ranches.