America's dustpan?

A depressing feature in today's New York Times about Treece, Kansas and Picher, Oklahoma: two towns about to be wiped off the map because of an environmental calamity. A century after decades of rampant mining first began in the area, the residents have been bought out, the town hall boarded up and the water tower sold at auction for scrap metal. A church sold at auction for $50, its pews destined to become firewood.

One irritating aspect of the article is that despite the local people expressing their affection for their hometown and their deep regret for having to move, all their articulate words are nearly lost amid patronising descriptions of their K-mart clothes, their physical features picked over for any defects. It seems as far as the writer is concerned, these are rubes and rednecks.

The writer also trots out the usual tired descriptions of Kansas being flat and featureless. He says it's literally flat as a pancake, citing 'researchers' who compared the state's topography to something off IHOP's breakfast menu. I was reminded of the surveyors who determined in 1918 that the geographical centre of the lower 48 was located near Lebanon, Kansas after balancing a cardboard cutout map of the US atop a tack.

I was also perturbed to hear an area 60 miles east of where I had grown up be described as a 'dustbowl' and a 'dustpan'? Really? A desert like the Bonneville Flats? I beg to differ. The area sees 40 inches of rain a year (more than many parts of England) and Treece is less than 10 miles from the western fringes of the Ozark mountain plateau. Had the writer not driven the same road from Kansas City as I have many a time, one that goes through thick forests, past numerous lakes and verdant wildlife refuges, not to mention the lovely Victorian town of Fort Scott?

So here is some proof that Kansas is not as flat, featureless, dry or despondent as the big city journalists like to portray.