I get asked this a lot when I mention how tough it is to go back and visit my daughter and grandchildren, only to have to go back home and be separated from them again. There’s a lot of reasons why I’ll never move back there again.
My hometown, once a place where a family could earn a decent wage and live fairly well, has been in an economic slump for a couple of decades now, and nothing seems to snap the city out of it. It was an oil dependent town. Much, much drilling going on around the area. Then the bottom fell out during the oil crisis. People who couldn’t find jobs to sufficiently support themselves left. Other businesses closed. The Tradewinds plant closed. The Beech Aircraft plant closed. All that was left was the meat packing plant, with its lower wages and dismal working conditions. There was a small glimmer of hope a few years back when Trailmobile expressed an interest in locating a plant there. They told the city fathers they’d come, if the city would, in effect, ’sponsor’ them. They did. Trailmobile came, there were more well-paying jobs (though still not nearly enough to support the entire populace, but it was a start) and things were looking up. Then, Trailmobile left, suddenly, just closed their doors and snuck away, almost like sneaking out in the night, and the city got stuck holding the bag of a huge plant - now empty.
Drilling goes on around there still - but even with the price of oil climbing upward - meaning more drilling - the oil industry around there never seems to have been able to fully recover from the fall it took way back when. It’s far too unstable anymore as well. Workers can (and are) laid off on a regular basis, depending on how much drilling is going on at any particular time.
It’s isolated, with the nearest city of any population being either Wichita or Amarillo, both a 3-1/2 hour drive away. There’s no arts to speak of, no culture, nothing to attract the best and brightest of people to our town with their businesses. The educational system is a joke, and restless young people with bad home lives, which abounds there, have nothing to do save join gangs. Funny how gangs are everywhere. Even in small town rural farmland America.
It’s ugly there. There’s no scenery pleasing to the eye, to speak of, save the beauty of the wheat fields as they grow and ripen. It’s hot, dry, barren, and run down. There’s no foliage to speak of, no water, no ground cover save bermuda grass and goatheads. Every time I go back, it’s like culture shock, and I can’t imagine I was ever even momentarily content to live with such… disrepair, filth, ugliness… surrounding me. There’s empty buildings in various states of disrepair.. homes that are run down as well. Graffiti is king. It’s surreal to go back there now and see the deterioration time and change has wrought when I still have the town of my childhood in my mind’s eye. I’m not so sure it was ever more pleasing then than it was now, or my child’s innocence never saw the ugliness of it all..
The major shopping place is Wal-Mart. That’s it. Wal-Mart. There’s a Dillon’s Food Store, a few dollar stores, a Hispanic market, convenience stores out the wazoo, but the granddaddy of them all in the shopping department there is - Wal-Mart. There used to be a K-Mart, a Gibson’s Discount Center, a Homeland Foods, a Food Bonanza… all run out by Wal-Mart’s rock bottom pricing. I honestly don’t see how Dillon’s has remained. The Food Bonanza building still stands empty, after a number of years. The most growth they’ve had since I’ve left is a new apartment complex, an Applebee’s and a new Walgreens. The one redeeming quality in this arena is - they do have a Sonic.
The weather is horrid. It blows. And it blows. And it blows some more, till you think you will literally go mad. There is no pretty, gentle snowfall there. It blizzards, with a fierceness that threatens your life. It rarely rains, but when it does, it floods, and the unprepared streets flood over, often throwing parts of the city into crisis. The heat is brutal and dry, sucking all the moisture right out of your body and leaving you suffering from heat stroke very quickly if you’re not careful.
The man pickings are slim for a single woman my age. Most available men wear jeans that show the crack of their ass when they bend over, even slightly. Scrumptdillyicious. Before I left, I had dated both a truck driver (the upside to that was that he wasn’t home very often) and a farmer, both of whom suffered from this denim derriere affliction. Think Gomer Pyle - dressed badly. I needed more than that. I needed someone who stimulated my mind, my heart, my soul, my every essence, fed me, nurtured me, cherished me, challenged me. My last husband - he never could ‘get it’ when he’d shower me with some expensive trinket, then turn around and belittle me on the same day, then wonder why the baubles he draped around me meant nothing to me. A distant and closed man who always kept me at an emotional arm’s length, I’d tell him - “things do not matter to me - I don’t need things, I need you!” Exasperated, and never understanding, he always replied “What are you talking about? I’m right here, aren’t I?”
My sister lives there. I cannot abide her for any great length of time at all. She’s pompous and pretentious and has designs on running my life whenever the slightest opportunity presents itself. I find her comical and pathetic since I’ve moved away. All her putting on of airs while she lives in the one ‘nice’ section of town, surrounded by squalor…
The rest of the town is like her - unmasked.
I only go back there to see my daughter and grandchildren. I am anxious to get there all during the trip, but the closer I get to my destination, I am already getting that restless, anxious, desperate need to get the hell back out…
before it sucks me in again and sucks the life out of me.
