Slowly Dying In The Desert
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10/13/2019
In a single sentence, this is a town that is slowly dying in the desert- and nobody here cares.
Why- because the people who run this town were born in the 1940's or before, and they are all on their way out.
The first thing I noticed when I moved here was the segregation between what they call "Taco Town" and the rest of the city. South of the tracks, you see well watered homes, streets that are in (relatively) good repair, etc.
North of the tracks, you see rutted streets, wandering packs of stray and half wild dogs, trash blowing everywhere, and about one in three homes are abandoned shacks. The reason they call it "Taco Town" is because the population is overwhelmingly Hispanic; in most places, that would be considered a racist term, but not here in Portales, where that is considered perfectly acceptable.
The second thing I noticed were the streets; indeed, when it rains, the entire town becomes flooded. Why- because this town of 12,000 people has never bothered to design streets with storm drains. Here, and Clovis, are the only towns in the United States of this size which do not have storm drains. Of course, that would require money.
The third thing that is terrible here is the fact that you have to essentially go to Amarillo or Lubbock to purchase anything. You would expect Clovis to have more than Portales, as it is a regional center , but it does not have much more; or you would expect to be able to order things online, as people do in most places. However, getting anything to actually arrive is a fifty-fifty proposition.
The FedEx agent in the area has lost two of my packages- marking them as delivered, when he never showed up. The response from FedEx was that they are not responsible. I am not the only person who has dealt with this, as several of my neighbors and even a police officer I know have had the same problem.
Likewise, the post office here is not much better. I have had overnight packages show up two or three weeks later, completely mangled, and they act as if they are not responsible.
You see, that brings me to the worst quality of this region in general:
The people who live here act like they don't care about anything.
It isn't just a lack of work ethic, it is a general attitude that life sucks, and that they have no reason to do anything. You see it in the way that people let trash blow all over there yards, to the way that they dress when they go to the store. Getting anyone to do anything with any efficiency is impossible.
The town claims it has 17,000 people on the billboard as you come into town, but that is a lie. There are essentially two demographics here- older people that are passing away, and younger people who are leaving as soon as they graduate college at the latest.
The older people don't want it to improve or change, as that would bring in "outsiders", which would threaten their control of the politics of the area, so they would rather it remain the way it is. They have fought off any attempts at bringing in new businesses, and this town only has one bar.
Daniel | Murfreesboro, TN