"Ringling Ringling, slipping away..  only forty people living there today.  The streets are dusty and the bank has been torn down...it's a dying little town."~Jimmy Buffett
In our travels we have been through major cities, small towns, and everything in between.  If you want to see the real life part of our country, get off of the interstate.
Some of the small towns are picturesque.  A Norman Rockwell painting come to life.  People passing on the sidewalk, stopping for conversation, purchasing something from a small Mom and Pop business.
This seems to be more prevalent in the Northeastern part of the country.
As we've traveled through the Southern Plains, the towns are farther apart.  There doesn't seem to be much industry, or much of anything to employ the folks in these towns.  And, truth be told, there isn't.
So many of these small towns are dying.  The town that was once booming has now gone bust.
Folks who can,  have moved on to bigger/better places.  Those who chose to stay watch their town die a bit more every day.
The part of Oklahoma we are in right now was once part of the mighty Chisholm Trail. Ranchers drove their cattle through here to get it to market or to the railroad to ship them back east.  While cattle still seems to be the main economic factor, the means of transporting said cattle no longer requires weeks of a cattle drive.
Now these small towns, once an important link, are nothing but a shell of what they once were.
Someday...the whole town will be nothing but a memory.  Alive only in tales and memories.
Perhaps we were lucky to see them before they're gone forever.