Posted on 03/07/2011 4:48:30 PM PST by camerongood210
There is not much to be happy about these days in Happy, Texas. Main Street is shuttered but for the Happy National Bank, slowly but inexorably disappearing into a High Plains wind that turns all to dust. The old Picture House, the cinema, has closed. Tumbleweed rolls into the still corners behind the grain elevators, soaring prairie cathedrals that spoke of prosperity before they were abandoned for lack of business.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Don't we have enough Bowl Games as it is, already?
They can quit the ethanol fraud bowl any time as far as I am concerned.
See my tagline :(
No real precip. in 6 months, thank god we have a very good well.
>> Don’t we have enough Bowl Games as it is, already?
Apparently not; Texas couldn’t get into one this year.
We Texas fans were not Happy about that.
So, why don’t we build desalienation plants and refill the aquifier?
lol
The biggest cause of the dust bowl was the depletion of the soil—that was supposed to have been fixed with more modern agricultural processes (such as rotating crops).
Low or no-til cultivation, instead of the turning plow.
Don’t forget the pay farmers to not farm bowl and the sell grain at below cost prices and reimburse the farmers for the difference bowl.
And we've had nearly 10" of precipitation in the last sixty days. The river had been running high or in flood for weeks.
how about a bucket brigade from the great lakes?
solves unemployment and drought
Yep that did it!
Nice pic. Those big rigs were monsters. See em some on RFDTV, but never pulling a 14 row. You had to know this was a real warm job working and riding on a steamer.
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...
Ain’t gonna happen.
The Dust Bowl had two causes, only one of which was drought. The other, more serious, cause of the Dust Bowl was the idiotic US government telling prospective farmers “Rain follows the plow!” when they were selling them land that they stole from the Indians.
Well, immigrants from places like Germany, the Ukraine, Russia, Poland et al believed the government land agents and they plowed the Plains, then plowed them again and again and again and again. Pretty soon, the soil was turned into a powdery silt that is more like talcum powder than soil.
Today, we no longer have Federal employees telling farmers on the plains that they should plow the ground to make it rain.
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