Flyover States
West Kansas, Small town America, Artist colonies
Way out in the high plains, hundreds of miles from any major city, the region of Southwest Kansas lies. A remote location that even folks in Eastern Kansas consider to be a bit “out there”.
Historic land of cowboys and savages. Of one-lane open roads, swaths of desert, and farmland. There’s long been tension between the distinct southwest Kansas and the rest of the state. In the early ‘90s a secession movement actually gained decent traction to form a new 51st state of West Kansas.
What brought me to this enclave in the heart of the American expanse? I suppose a bit of morbid curiosity.
Truman Capote wrote extensively about the area in his seminal non-fiction crime novel In Cold Blood. The book paints a vivid portrait of 1960s-era Holcomb, KS and Garden City. A snapshot of small-town rural Americana startled by the murder of a prominent local family.
I’d been spending nearly five-months driving across the country, living out of short-term rentals and hotels. Headed east from Colorado I decided to shack up in Garden City for a night to check out the place in present day.
Garden City circa 2023 is indeed still a slice of Americana, albeit a different kind than the ‘60s era. In many ways it is a microcosm of the greater changes in the country.
Driving east into town on Rte. 400 you pass the Tyson meatpacking plant, the largest employer in the area. Just a few miles further lies Garden City proper. A magnificent scene of quintessential American stroad, lined with big-box stores that serve the surrounding communities.
On a semi-humid day the odor of manure wafts over. An inescapable smell of agro-business.
Leave hotel, manure.
Gas up car, manure.
Exit Wal-Mart, manure.
Down to the river, manure.
manure, manure, manure, man-eww-ooor…
The locals don’t seem to mind it much. Funny thing with smells, you only feel the accelerations. Spend enough time in filth and you won’t even notice it after long.
Who are the locals now? Well, mostly Hispanics.
The Golden Triangle of Meatpacking
Starting in the 1980s many meatpacking plants set up shop in southwest Kansas. The activity helped boost the economy of the region, while also leading to an influx of all kinds of migrants to flock to the area.
Meat processing is one a group of American industries that largely survive on the work of immigrants. The brutal nature of work, spending day after day slaughtering cattle and cutting out portions of flesh, leads most people to either avoid the job entirely or seek other employment ASAP. Migrants though (with limited english skills, questionable visa status, and not many other options) have been sought out by employers as workers that may not turnover as quickly.
From the 1930s through the 1970s slaughterhouse labor typically earned a “dirty job” premium to other factory jobs. Things started changing in the ‘80s. Many meat plants left metro areas and retreated to the shadows of the remote rural heartland. Union labor dissolved, employers contented themselves to work with mostly a perpetual churn of inexpensive undocumented migrants. The price we pay for cheap beef.
Garden City is situated in the “Golden Triangle of Meatpacking”. A trio of SW Kansas communities (with Liberal, KS and Dodge City, KS) that specialize in beef processing and have become the only three Hispanic-majority municipalities in the state.
The American Small-Town
While the meat industry in these towns has changed the flavor of the communities, at least it provides an economic engine to keep things afloat. Head over towards the rust belt and you’ll find many once-proud towns that are on their way to disrepair.
Youngstown, OH; Gary, IN; Erie, PA; Syracuse, NY… The plants shut down, the people left. Drugs came in to blunt the pain of watching your city fall into decay. What has been left behind though is tons of cheap houses.
Read the headlines from thinktanks and media outlets and they will drone on about “America’s Housing Crisis”. A largely overblown narrative. There may not be cheap housing where you want to live, but there’s plenty of inexpensive areas where you could own a home. Especially with remote work on the rise.
Now, resettling the rust-belt towns may be a bit extreme. I would not want to live in the modern day ghetto of Gary, Indiana. Even in the nicer towns there’s an eerie feeling to them. A sense they’re somehow haunted by ghosts of the past. You see the old buildings, many of them architecturally impressive, and you can’t help but trying to envision how the place was during its heyday.
For brief moments you can occasionally see a glimpse of revival. On a long summer weekend towns on the banks of Lake Erie become a getaway destination in the region. Families walking the streets, kids running around, American flags lining the rows of old Victorian homes. It’s fleeting though, these are mostly not permanent residents.
There are plenty of other cheap places in Middle-America though that have economic activity and don’t come shackled with a deep legacy of deterioration.
Hate commuting through traffic and paying through the nose for shelter? Move out near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The City of Five Seasons (the 5th being the time to enjoy the other 4 due to the short average commute time the city touts). There’s companies headquartered there, there’s a variety of different industries. But, in spite of all the complaining about housing prices, most cosmopolitan people would balk at the notion of such an idea.
At a bar in Cedar Rapids I chat with Colleen. Early-30s, she previously worked for the local tourism board before switching careers and becoming a nurse for the downtown medical center. I ask her what she thinks of the place and I am met with the common small-city refrain. “It’s not great, but my family is nearby”.
The small-towner typically falls into two buckets, either they take great pride in their hometown, or (in many cases) they have a disdain for it. The contempt can build for a variety of reasons. They’re sick of the same people there, they feel they should’ve left and been doing “bigger and better things”, or maybe they’re just generally discontented and take it out on the place they live.
The successful, generational small-town family is increasingly uncommon. Ambitious kids often head to college and then settle in a major-city. More excitement, more work opportunities, more attractive younger people to mingle with.
The Artist Colony
Given the cheap cost of living available in a lot of spots across the country, you would think you would find more communities sprouting up where bohemians flock to and set up shop.
Artists, authors, musicians, counter-culturalists. All you would need is a few trailblazers to declare a new place hip and begin a trend. Instead they congregate in the same few cities and pay thousands a month to live in contemporary urban squalor.
The problem probably lies in a proximity to wealth being necessary to keep artists alive. Working-class and poor generally aren’t shelling out much cash for the arts. The business of art is really in hypnotizing rich people to spend exorbitant sums for your creations.
The few more off the beaten path spots that you might consider to be “artist colonies” are usually locations where the uber-wealthy have properties they like to retreat to. Places like Carmel, CA; the Taos/Santa Fe region of New Mexico. Filled with art galleries to sell to transient tourists and seasonal residents. Even these scenes in present day aren’t as vibrant. Nearby real estate becomes more expensive, there’s not many young people around. Their reputation is built on more of a bygone legacy of artistic tradition.
I wonder if the student-loan industrial complex plays a role in this as well. A generation of potential artists memed in to taking on large sums of debt “studying art” instead of just creating with other free-spirits. Much harder to live like a vagrant pursuing an artistic vision when the debt collectors are knocking on your door. Unless you’ve got a trust-fund, necessity leads to leaving the arts behind and finding a practical way to earn bread.
Cedar Rapids shout-out, awesome!