Plainview appears to be sinking, like most other small South Plains towns

The other day I drove around in Plainview, the town I grew up in. Like almost all the small towns in the United States' central prairies, it has had problems holding onto jobs and young people during the past couple of decades. But until recently, Plainview seemed to have resisted the widespread blight better than most, perhaps because it's a secondary commercial center midway between the regional capitals, Amarillo and Lubbock. My visit this time, though, left me feeling quite discouraged about its prospects: I saw an obvious jump in the number of empty downtown storefronts since my last drive-through survey about two years ago, along with decaying neighborhoods with many poorly maintained houses, more than a few standing empty.

My realtor friend Mona tells me that people in the small South Plains towns are bailing out and moving to Lubbock, where they've driven to shop and go out to eat for years anyway. Those who make this move get the benefits of better access to medical care and specialty stores while not having to go very far away from the small towns where they still have some roots. Lubbock real estate developers have launched massive building projects to accomodate these newcomers, along with the influx of out-of-state healthcare professionals drawn to its many medical facilities, although it remains to be seen whether the two groups will provide enough buyers for the primarily high-end residences going up in west Lubbock.

This change process may accelerate just a few years down the road, if looming economic and political changes stifle the cotton industry, the region's biggest financial engine. Raising cotton in the South Plains is a high tech enterprise that requires massive inputs of fossil fuels, for tractors, irrigation pumps, and fertilizer. One more doubling of the price of oil may erase the profits that currently drive the economy of the area. Add to this the likelihood of a phase-out of federal cotton subsidies as second- and third-world cotton-producing countries press for a level playing field through the World Trade Organization courts, compound it with the dropping water table of the Ogallala aquifer, on which the thirsty plants depend, and you have the recipe for a sweeping, permanent nosedive in the whole region. Lubbock will of course continue to have revenue infusions from its medical centers and large state university, but both these sources of income are relatively minor compared to King Cotton.