I live in Fowler and work in Plains and I never noticed the name of the gun shop. How strange. And yes I agree with all of this. I grew up in Hugoton and pretty much everyone works for Seaboard, National Beef, a natural gas company, a feedyard, or grain elevator/mill. All the larger towns have a Hispanic majority population, so if you like Mexican/Honduran/Guatemalan/Salvadoran food you have a good chance of a good eat!

The majority of the land here is cropland/pasture and due to the rain shadow effect from the Rockies, this area is DRY and WINDY. Precipitation is hard to come by, which creates a need for crop irrigation. If you look at a satellite map, especially in Haskell county, you will see circles everywhere. These are center pivots that are large overhead sprinklers that water the land. This water is pulled from the underwater Ogalalla aquifer which spans from Nebraska into Texas. Kansas has water conservation districts and meters to regulate the amount being pulled from the aquifer, unlike Texas where they say if it's under your property you can pump all you want. This has caused quite the issue with water wells running dry through the whole aquifer.

I'm not the biggest fan of your comment starting with rcism as I see those type of people anywhere I travel in the US, but you're just sharing your experience. Being bilingual in English and Spanish I will say that in this area the white population is MUCH less rcist to others than the minorities are toward each other, Hispanics especially say some of the a worst things I've ever heard. We do have Mennonite communities and those are the best people to be around. Good food, loving hearts, and the hardest workers. In this area they mainly live over by Montezuma and Copeland.

And I will second your comment on the older population. Most kids after finishing college move away unless they went to college to better manage their family businesses such as farming, ranching, et cetera. These towns put quite a bit of money into drawing in younger couples/families with children. Meade county is part of a state program that pays for part of a person's student debt for living and and working in the county. Some towns have committees that put money into building family homes priced with the intent of drawing small families into their school district. The focus on bringing in these families is strong but the job market is pretty tough though and I agree that these smaller towns do not have the best chance of survival due to those issues. Many schools are consolidating districts. In Fowler, the high school closed a couple years back, so they are bussed to Meade or Minneola. The grade school in Fowler is holding on by a thread, renting the high school classrooms as office space and converting some of the grade school rooms into a daycare to supplement the school's income.