Last Sunday my wife and I made a trip to Levelland. The city has changed since the last time I visited! It has been hit by the Big Oil Boom. You find evidence of the squalor and destruction all over town-- a nice little park has been chopped up into poorly maintained ball fields, trees have been felled, and the overall result is ugly and trashy, with the smell of hydrogen sulfide as a nasty garnish. There are pumpjacks at work downtown and near the park. Hotels and motels have been built. South Plains College has expanded. New construction is in evidence. Not a lot of this prosperity has translated into infrastructure. You still see lots of crumbling buildings, and businesses that have gone under. A Hispanic gentlemen drove up to our car in a big crew cab pickup and asked me why I was taking pictures of his building. His "building" was a ruin but he said he had cars stored in it. I explained my hobby. The presence of my wife probably made me seem less of a threat. Maybe he decided we were harmless nuts. But after that encounter, and the presence of local cops who began to shadow us, we decided to get out of town, being very careful to obey the speed limits. I got lots of pics, though. Some I processed to create a more vivid image, a few I left unmolested, as documentation. After I get them down-sized for posting, they will be appearing here.
