Not many would consider themselves lucky to have to make the two hour drive from Fort Worth to Wichita Falls for work, but I do. It's a fascinating place, where futuristic-looking fifties architecture--now mostly boarded up--meets the distinctive western-style brick of a Texas town. It's the Main Street of Small Town America. Or was. It's now so eerily quiet that I could stop my car in the middle of the street to snap a picture of a building I liked. Close to the border with Oklahoma, everything is named "Texoma," as in Texoma Auto Repair.
I can only wonder at its bustling commercial and industrial heyday--coinciding with the invention of air conditioning, perhaps? Of of big cars that could take ranch families to town on Saturdays. Whatever its story is, Wichita Falls has the patina of decay, the optimistic exuberance of fifties design, and the charm of the American vernacular that gets me getting out my camera.
Not many would consider themselves lucky to have to make the two hour drive from Fort Worth to Wichita Falls for work, but I do. It's a fascinating place, where futuristic-looking fifties architecture--now mostly boarded up--meets the distinctive western-style brick of a Texas town. It's the Main Street of Small Town America. Or was. It's now so eerily quiet that I could stop my car in the middle of the street to snap a picture of a building I liked. Close to the border with Oklahoma, everything is named "Texoma," as in Texoma Auto Repair. 
I can only wonder at its bustling commercial and industrial heyday--coinciding with the invention of air conditioning, perhaps? Of of big cars that could take ranch families to town on Saturdays. Whatever its story is, Wichita Falls has the patina of decay, the optimistic exuberance of fifties design, and the charm of the American vernacular that gets me getting out my camera.
