The Arkansas in Dodge City. Not even damp.
Much of the Desert was settled during unusually wet years. East of the 100th Meridian the farming homesteaders could generally survive; west of the Meridian,one had to ranch and generally, a single homestead allotment was too small for a viable ranch.
It should get markedly greener, wetter, and damper from here.Dodge City is where the server at lunch called me "Sweetheart" (twice), "Sweetie," and "Honey," during the first five minutes I was there. The unusual thing about that is that it was an Asian restaurant.
---
Outside the
restaurant, a chunky, white man and his nicely dressed spouse stopped
me to chat about my trip -- the panniers attract attention. We
laughed about the modern GPS-controlled tractors -- he blames his
constantly stiff neck on turning around on his tractor seat to watch
the plow for most of his life.
He mentioned that he
irrigated some of his land. Irrigation water in this area comes
from the Ogallala Aquifer. Though the Ogallala is deepest and
most extensive beneath Nebraska, a branch of it extends roughly beneath
the Arkansas in Kansas. (There's a bit of it beneath the
southeast corner of Colorado, which is why some people in Holly told me
there were some "circles" south of town.)
I asked him whether the aquifer was dropping:
"Oh yeah. All around here. But I'm lucky. I just got lucky. My well is in good shape. It hasn't dropped at all. Maybe a foot in the last ten years is all."
Since we were standing close to where Dodge City's original main street, Front Street once was, and I knew there had once been a toll bridge over the Arkansas near by, I asked where the river was. His wife pointed south and said, "Well, it's over there" and started to give me directions to get to the road and bridge over it. The gentleman piped up:
"But it ain't there."
Me: "What?"
Him: "It's all dried up. Colorado takes all the water."
Me: "Colorado takes it? I just came through there, and there's no water there at all. It looks like the Dust Bowl east of Pueblo. A county commissioner told me that he wouldn't be surprised if in five years there aren't any towns left between Pueblo and the border. And as I came into Kansas everything was green again. It looked like they had water out there."
Him: "Well, they keep it all in reservoirs."
Me: "I don't know, the reservoirs in Crowley County that I rode past looked empty or nearly empty and John Martin is really low . . . "
Him: "Well, Pueblo's taking it then. They're taking all the water."
I changed the subject. Just down from the restaurant was what looked like a Somali resource center. There were seven or eight African guys sitting in front of it, some smoking. Some of them had said hello to me when I walked past to get to the restaurant.
I asked whether there was a meatpacking plant nearby. Since many of Monica's refugees work in meatpacking plants, when I saw the Somali guys, I assumed that's why they were in Dodge City. He told me that just outside of town were the two largest packing plants in the country. Together all the area plants slaughter 165,000 cattle a week, he said.
When I asked him whether the Somalis were in town to work at the plants, he said:
"The town is full of them! Obama is bringing them in and they're in every town in Kansas. They don't work nowhere. The meatpacking work is too hard they say. They just get a government check. Mexicans too."
Two things were clear from his tone.
First, he didn't like Somalis or Mexicans, and second, he was convinced
that Obama himself was engaged in some sort of plot to fill Kansas with
welfare-draining immigrants.
His wife just looked away and shifted her feet.
--
Later I asked a couple Somali guys where they worked, and they both said at the Cargill Meat Solutions plant -- yes, that's the plant's formal name. They both said the work was very hard -- one who worked cleaning necks and hanging them on hooks showed me that one of his fingers had the end missing. They said they made $7.85 an hour but couldn't get all the hours they wanted. If they got 80 hours in two weeks they would get very few hours the next week. Still, they said the money was good, and they liked living in Dodge City -- "it's peaceful," they both said.
Turns out that one of Dodge City's former
City Managers is on the Biking Across Kansas ride that I am
following. He had more to say about Dodge City and the packing
plants.
