Yesterday when I drove down Dodge City’s busiest street to get to my hotel I noticed one Mexican restaurant after another and the restaurant’s signs were entirely in Spanish. I was curious so I looked up Dodge City’s demographics. Dodge City is 68% Hispanic. I don’t care one way or another.
This morning south of Dodge City I went west on two lane Highway 56 for over 130 miles. The road paralleled railroad tracks which are on the north side of the road. There were vast fields of Milo which is Grain Sorghum. Milo is fed to livestock. I drove past three huge feed lots holding I don’t know how many head of cattle. The cattle’s future are less than bright. Every so many miles would be large grain silos adjacent to the tracks and a few blocks of very small homes which had seen better days were on the other side of the highway. There might be a school and or a small lot of cars for sale. Sometimes there would be a diner or a bar or a little store.
The Great Depression and Dust Bowl have always interested me. Years ago I read a pretty good book called The Worst Hard Time which is about the dust bowl. The author picked a town named Boise City, Oklahoma as ground zero of the Dust Bowl and retold stories from that area. Boise City is in Oklahoma’s panhandle not far from New Mexico. Driving through Boise City has been on my Bucket List. It’s way down on the list. Today I drove through. It ain’t pretty. I wanted to take a picture of its old town hall but it looks to have been rebuilt after WWII.
