He also seems to have a sizable anti-Texas bias, but that could be just me.
Happy is about 35 miles from Amarillo, not 75. It does not take an hour to get from Happy to Amarillo.
Lubbock is not the next town south on I-27. If you count the small towns- and those of us who live here do- there are six towns between Happy and Lubbock.
Happy is not the only town that is not as large nor prosperous as it once was. Changes in agriculture do not totally account for that, however. It's much easier now to travel a few miles to a larger town to shop a larger, less expensive stores, see a movie at a cinema complex, eat out with a variety of restaurants to choose from, and so forth. Agriculture may have changed- irrigation methods do conserve more water, and crops being grown now demand less water than previously grown crops- but there is still agriculture and cattle ranching. (Texas produces more cotton than any other state, and the Lubbock/South Plains area is the largest contiguous cotton producing area in Texas). Another change in agriculture that has affected population numbers: it is less labor intensive than it was some years ago. More can be grown with the help of fewer people.
I don't believe that the decline in population, particularly in small towns, is unique to West Texas. Young people tend to grow up and move away. I don't hear many say "I want to live in Dallas or Austin because we are running out of water." I hear them say that they are looking for fun, excitement, opportunity, etc.
When a writer gets some of the most basic facts in the article wrong, I have to question how accurate the rest of his information is, as well. Worth checking into, at any rate.
A day or two ago it was a piece from a UK source predicting floods in America’s heartland. LOL...
Chiming in to support your conclusion.
My old home town in Northern Oklahoma is the county seat of a county which was almost totally dedicated to wheat farming.
The county raises about four-or-five times more wheat today than it did when I lived there. And the population of my home town is virtually unchanged from what it was when I graduated high school in 1956 -- still around 1200.
Yet, while the town was crammed with shoppers every Saturday in 1956, it is now virtually empty on Saturdays. Retail is almost non-existent because:
1. The population of the county is now half what it was in 1956.
2. All but the convenience shopping is now done at the "city" in the adjacent county, about 40 miles away.
Vastly greater agricultural productivity employing far fewer people, coupled with improvements in transportation and communication, has totally changed the nature of the rural countryside.