Ghost Towns and the Circle of Life

I stand in silence

The noise of my imagination in conflict with my eyes

The cruelty of the present, always victorious,

Mocking the past like an abandoned lover.

Hollowed buildings stand aphonic

Like imprisoned sentries on duty, steadfast

The only movement, their shadows

Casting distorted angles on the streets

Time does not stand still

Its unapologetic arrogance taunts me.

If time is the tortoise, then I am the hare

I will be passed too. 

Preface - Neither Wellington or Paducah are listed as ghost towns- Let’s make sure it stays that way with our support by visiting, and enjoying their charming and wonderful people. Take the time to make a day trip to these locations along US 83, and visit their shops, their museums, and visit with the local folks along the way. Their stories will entertain you, and leave you with a sense of family. At the bottom of this blog, are links to their city website and links from Texas Escapes. So get out there and participate in one of their festivals, or events, and enjoy the history and the contributions they have made to our state. 

Ghost Towns. The term conjures up visions of dusty streets and romantic notions of a by-gone era. It transports you back to a happier time when life was simple and we find ourselves longing for the past. But nothing could be farther from the truth.


     While driving to Shamrock Texas this past weekend to experience the St Patrick’s Day festival, I stopped at several towns along the US 83 route. Town like Eden, Paint Rock, Ballinger, Childress, Anson, Wellington and Paducah to name a few. In between these towns the terrain varies from level pastures and grazing land to hardscrabble sparse scrub brush and 83 follows these cues. From seeming straight sections to undulating curves and hills US 83 passes next to and over several rivers. It’s on these sections between towns, I allowed my mind to contemplate the town I had just left, and wonder about what was waiting for me ahead.

One thing that seemed to jump out to me was- As the terrain goes so do the people. On the flat open sections, you see farmhouses dotting the landscape. Water towers are easily seen in the distance assuring you a town is nearby. Cattle, mostly Black Angus eagerly graze on the fresh spring shoots unaware of their impending fate. You see tractors of all sizes, pulling various types of implements designed to torture the earth to get her ready for the spring planting. But as the terrain toughens, so do the people. Homes are farther apart, the economy goes industrial, like Oil, and farms are smaller. Towns become farther apart. Even the cattle change, from the soft rounded physique of the Angus, brown muscular longhorns rule this rocky area. The sparse vegetation is only shared with sheep and an occasional goat herd.




     The towns along US 83 are usually fairly small, yet each seem to have been able to have sustained themselves in one way or another. The farming towns will probably have at least one feed store, and across the street will be a gas station-minimart. Perhaps there will be a diner and even a high school that is proudly displaying the football or baseball championship with a date before you were born. The workforce in these towns is truly a dichotomy of the past, and a fore bearer of thing to come. You most likely will see two generations working at the diner and the mini mart. The first group are the local teenagers eagerly planning their next day off to spend their money on what they deem necessary. At the other end of the spectrum, you find the second group, 60 or older. They are eager for their next day off also, but they plan on spending the day resting. They have one thing in common, and one enemy. Time and age are their weakness. One group too young to leave the town, and the other too old to leave. Whenever I am in a diner like this, I find it surreal to see the patrons walk in. They are the regulars, the cash flow of the community. They cover the rest of the age group. They sit down and are served by people that could be their children or their parents. So it poses a couple of questions. Are the younger servers going to grow up and become the major cash flow in the community? What about the current cash flow patrons? Are they going to be the next set of elder servers? The odds are the answer to both of those questions is no. So the circle of life is broken. And the gap between the break widens every day.


     The speed and size along the circle in which these towns travel varies. When a town hits the gap and begins the downhill path also varies. Much like our own lives, their eventual death cannot be predicted. Some of these towns seem to be in a perpetual hospice environment. No one seems to be willing to let go, and everyone around begins to suffer. Because just like a family member, residents are hoping for a miracle. That the city will wake up one morning, and be cured, and life will return to its former self. But the towns life support has been turned off. The unplanned has happened.  Either the loss of a railroad or Interstate in a neighboring county or even weather. Perhaps it was the poor planning of former leaders, bad politics or greed. It never just one thing. It will be a toxic “witches brew” of events and the start of decline will be silent and generally unseen. You can sometimes see what is happening by taking a look at two towns. Paducah and Wellington Texas.


      Wellington and Paducah are far from dead, but the struggles for economy are present.  The

stores in both squares are sparse. Looking into the windows, you sometimes see scaffolding and paint can, offering promises of possible revival. Some buildings are boarded up, with no windows to look into. People in both towns, have a sense of pride, and a strong desire for preservation. That takes money, and people who are willing to take a chance, and inject needed dollars into the towns’ square. For now, most of these towns only hope are to continue their annual festivals, and do their best to keep their museums, and shops open for the public to come see and enjoy. But for some towns, it is getting increasingly harder to manage these events, and maintain the museums. People who remember the past, and curate these places are growing old, and as they retire, the stories, and the memories fade with each passing of the sun. The displays become fragile and show aging as well. What was a historical item 5 years ago becomes todays financial burden, and most be either sold at an auction or thrown away. Sometimes these small towns have tough decisions to make, and

paying bills sometimes trump the painting of a building or the repair of an old monument no one seems to care about any longer.

       
     Towns do not die from the inside out. They die from the outside in. You have to travel beyond the town’s city limits to understand what has happened. Take a look along the side of the road leaving any town, and look along the horizon. In the cases of some of these towns, you will see the remains of farm houses, barns and lonely windmills standing testament to the past. Those farms were the cash flow, the children were the workforce, who became the cash flow. And the circle continued for quite some time. But the draw to these towns became the lure to leave. The trains and the highways that brought commerce, also stole the future workforce. They went forth to claim their future in another manner with promises of a better life elsewhere. So as the workforce aged, the circle became smaller, and as the youth left on the trains and highways, the gap began to widen. As the elder workforce was no longer able to work, and age attacked the cash flow, the towns began to suffer, the youth engaged in their own life, some never returning. The houses that sustained a city and lifestyle became ignored, and with age succumbed to the tortoise of time. And just as time chases us and our hair begins to gray, homes with once silver steel roofs turn dark with rust. It seems ironic that the colors are reversed.






      In most of the towns the building are the only reminder, a footnote in the history books. A sort of sideshow to the past if you will.  Their condition varies from near pristine condition to nothing more than a shell with bare beam exposed. Nothing seems to move except for an occasional cat seeking refuge in a nearby gap in a building. Perhaps another car may pass by as it makes it was from town to 83 for the lonely trip home. Most movements come from a flag waving in the breeze and the shadows of the buildings casting sharp angles contrasting against the red brick streets.


US 83 is like a timeline but do not be fooled. The road is anything but straight. We often use a timeline to measure the past present and future. But it is the circle of life that commands us. What is becomes what was. That is true for everyone and everything around us. My advice is simple. Make you circle big, walk slow, and keep the gap small.

May the tortoise of time take many breaks along his journey- And let’s hope he takes the scenic route. Perhaps US 83


For more information visit Texas Escape’s website
Paducah     http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasPanhandleTowns/PaducahTexas.htm
Wellington    http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasPanhandleTowns/WellingtonTexas.htm

City websites showing more history and events for the year
Paducah     http://www.paducahtx.com/index.html
Wellington     http://wellingtontx.com/