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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Small towns, big ideas among Dust Bowl survivors
  • Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 11:32:55 -0600


I know the remedy for all this small town decline, and it's sutainable and
profitable.
paul@largocreekfarms.com
--------------------------------

http://news.newstimes.com/story.php?id=64480

Small towns, big ideas among Dust Bowl survivors
By Joe Hurley

SPECIAL TO THE NEWS-TIMES
Travis Lindhorst
Dennis Lanheart, mayor of Lamar, Neb., (population: 24) stands in front of
the vacant town grocery store. Along with the bank, gas station, and post
office, many downtown stores have closed.
Editor's note: Former News-Times reporter Joe Hurley is walking across the
country along Route 6 and writing about the places he sees and people he
meets. He has made it to Colorado, where the people are fewer and the walking
is, well, let's say there is a lot to think about on the road.

Dennis Lenhart is mayor of Lamar, Neb. Population: 24 people — counting the
kids.

Once, Lamar was "quite a little town" Dennis said as he sat, wearing his
overalls and John Deere suspenders, in the town's community center, a former
bank.

When Route 6 went right through Lamar, the town had a store, a post office, a
gas station and the bank. Older folks remember when there were two grocery
stores. Travelers wou
Some fence posts in Nebraska have dried-out boots on top to keep moisture
from seeping in and rotting them.
ld stop for gas and farmers would come to town for supplies.

But the state moved Route 6. Now Lamar is two miles, on a dirt road, away
from the highway and there are just a handful of farms left. The school,
which has eight students, will probably close next year, Dennis said.

There are a lot of towns like Lamar in western Nebraska and eastern Colorado.
Even much larger communities have been shrinking for more than a
half-century. They saw families move out in the dust bowl years of the 1930s.
They watched young men leave during World War II and move elsewhere after the
war. They saw Route 6 decline after I-80 was built.

The farmers who went to town for groceries and entertainment are gone. Small
family farms have been consolidated into 2,000- and 3,000-acre spreads — and
they're struggling.

"There used to be a farmstead on every quarter," Dennis said. "Now there are
bigger farms with bigger equipment that takes less people."

The first farms around here were homesteads on quarter sections (160 acres).
More than a century ago, the Homestead Act offered free quarters to anyone
who lived on them for two years. Farming towns, each with their own grain
elevator and railroad station, grew up overnight. Today the elevators, some
of them 200 feet high with dozens of attached silos, dominate the landscape.

"Everybody around here depends on agriculture in some way — everybody, not
just the farmers," said Larry Wilson of Haxtun, Colo., a town of 1,000 people
that's managed to keep its population fairly even in recent years. Other
communities, like Cambridge in Nebraska and Holyoke and Fleming, both in
Colorado, have leveled off after a decline.

Back in the day, Fleming (population 500) had two theaters, two hotels, four
creameries, three grocery stores, and five filling stations. There were
boxing matches in the theater and people came from all around for amateur
hours on Saturdays.

Then came the dust. The 1930s drought and the constant winds covered
everything with d
[AD]
ust. Many farmers went to California, others went broke.

Those who stayed suffered.

"My mother would get up in the morning and wipe the dust off the table just
so we'd have a place to eat," said Don Langdon, a Fleming native.

People hung wet blankets over their doors to keep the dust out, but nothing
worked. Lowell Heath of Fleming came home from school one day to find his
living room covered with two inches of dust.

"It was the one time I saw my mother cry," he said.

In Nebraska, Hamlet's store, the post office, the gas stations, the one-room
jail house are all gone. And most of the 50 or so Hamlet residents are
old-timers.

"There's nothing to keep the kids here," said Clark McMinn, a Hamlet native.

But some people like the small communities. They enjoy the quiet and the
safety. Some move here to escape cities. It's an ideal area to raise
children, they say.

"If you like to be more or less isolated, this is a good place," said Dennis,
the mayor of Lamar. "Some people come here from Denver or California. They
think they they've stolen the house."

Lamar residents are divided. Some want to attract newcomers, others want to
leave things alone. A few years ago, they started a fund to pave the road to
town, but the road costs went up faster than their savings account.

Towns like Cambridge and Arapahoe, Neb. (both about 1,000 people) are
courting newcomers.

"Tell them we have a lot to offer," a group of Arapaho residents told me. And
they do. There are two modern homes for senior citizens and you can't beat
their movie theater's prices — $1.

The cross-country high-speed digital underground cable runs along this
stretch of Route 6 and most every library has a least a few Internet stations.

Local investors are building a new bowling alley and entertainment center in
Cambridge and a new ethanol plant is moving into town.

In Holyoke, Col., the town built its own theater and community center when
the movie house closed.

"There was nothing for the kids to do but get drunk and have babies," said
one of the community center's organizers. The center includes a swimming
pool, a basketball court and other activity areas. Resident Cherrie Brown
said volunteers work at the theater to keep the prices down.

Over in Palisade, Neb., residents formed their own credit union when the bank
moved out of town. When the only restaurant in town closed, a group of local
people bought it and started doing the cooking themselves. Now folks come
from other towns for the nightly dinner specials.

With 2,000 residents, Imperial is the largest city on the 150-mile stretch
between McCook, Neb., and Sterling, Colo. But it remains a country town at
heart. Come to Imperial during the county fair and you'll find many of the
businesses — including the newspaper, the library and the movie theater —
closed. Everyone's at the fair.

Mighty Ogallala

When you hit Nebraska, you're above the massive Ogallala Aquifer, a 174,000
square-mile underground lake that stretches from South Dakota to Texas.
Farmers knew the water was there long before the great drought, but they had
no way to bring it to the surface in large amounts.

The landscape changed in the 1950s when mechanical pumps drew the water
swiftly enough for large-scale irrigation. Center pivots began dotting the
fields and yields quickly doubled.

But the aquifer refills slowly on the edges and regulations limit the amount
of aquifer water western Nebraska farmers can use. In eastern Colorado
between the aquifer and the South Platte River, it's mostly dry farming — no
irrigation. They plant winter wheat, millet and even some corn. They graze
cattle. They pray for rain.

It's odd: Farmers are people of steady, conservative habits. But they're in
one of the riskiest businesses on earth. To survive these days, they need
large spreads and machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. New
farmers start out in debt and can be wiped out by drought, a hail storm, a
frost or an infestation.

"I'd move out, but I owe everybody in town, so I can't," quipped Lowell
Heath, who probably never, ever, thought of leaving Fleming. His neighbor,
Wanda West, wrote a poem about God taking a nap before finishing this part of
the world. He awoke to find a hard-crusted, good-for-nothing patch of land.

Instead of undoing the mistake, God decided to create people who love this
land the way it is.

"That's us," she said.

Two-finger salute

You can argue about whether the folks in Plains are really as friendly as
they seem, but you've got to admit they'll offer a wave at the drop of a
ten-gallon hat.

Wave at just about anybody on the road — bikers, truck drivers, teens, little
old ladies, farmers driving combines along the highway — and they'll all wave
back as though you were their neighbor.

Heck, they've turned waving into an art form. Traveling through Illinois,
Iowa, Nebraska and now Colorado, I've seen them all.

The one-finger wave (index finger raised off the steering wheel) is most
popular. A few individualists offer various two-finger salutes. Some raise
all five digits.

There's the old-fashioned L-shaped arm with palm up and the waving hand as
though it were on a bobble doll. One driver even gave me a two-handed wave.

Then there are the cool guys (it's always guys) who give you the pointing
finger, the gunslinger (pointing finger with raised thumb), and the wagging
finger, like a schoolmarm chastising a student.

Motorcyclists often offer an outstretched arm, in a "gimme five" gesture.
That's my favorite, too. It takes less energy and when you're waving hundreds
of times a day, that's important.

This waving thing can become automatic. I absentmindedly waved at a mile
marker once. Well, when you're on foot, mile markers are big events.

One guy told me his sister waved at a cow as they were driving by.

I'm OK with that. The big question is, did the cow wave back?

ä

For more on Joe's walk, go to www.route6walk.com






  • [Livingontheland] Small towns, big ideas among Dust Bowl survivors, Tradingpost, 08/30/2004

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