Travel Tales – DEATH OF THE COWGIRL CAFE

Channing Texas  pop. near zero-  businesses O

I’d traveled 2,400 miles of back-roads through the South in the past 12 days, and passed through dozens of small towns. They were in bad shape– most business closed, bushes growing through the sidewalks, homes with collapsed roofs, “gas stations” with no structure but a single rusted pump in an weedy lot.

Many once-thriving rural ‘towns’ are sad monuments to  the dashed dreams of earnest entrepreneurs  Looks like most people have moved to suburbs of Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte…

The devastation is a sad portrait of America, and the bitterness of those left behind is understandable in a way that isn’t covered much in the news. This cute/clever sign for THE COWGIRL CAFE looked pretty new, and seeing it from a distance, I was hoping to get  a nice down-home lunch there, after driving 3 hours on desolate Texas Highway 87 out of Amarillo.  It had been a voyage of dry ranches and as string of abandoned small towns.  To my disappointment,  it had been closed/abandoned for many months– joining Channing’s dozen other small businesses in oblivion.