Side Dish - Dodge City & Greensburg, KS - 5/16/08

The anticipation of seeing a Western town come to life, and living all the experiences seen on television and movies, was in both of our minds when we made the dusty drive through Southern Kansas one May afternoon. Who could forget the scene in National Lampoon's Vacation in the Dodge City saloon where the bartender pretend-shot Clark Griswold, and HAHAHAHA, won't that be awesome for us to do??? Would there be staged gunfights on the streets? Would the town be overrun with cowboys, gauchos and scenes from True Grit and the like?

But first, a sobering stop. The speck of Greensburg, Kansas was Ground Zero for a catastrophic F-5 tornado in May of 2007. The town of 1,500 people was 95% destroyed, flattened in a matter of moments when the tornado, which was the width of the town itself, swept through picking up everything in its path.

Leonardo DiCaprio found and championed this torn town, whose ultimate goal was to rebuild, and only with green and environmentally-friendly materials, which was followed in a Discovery Channel series as the town attempted the impossible. Not surprisingly.....nothing really happened and the town, and from rumors is much as it was when we visited. What we saw was a swath of broken trees, rubble piles, and the very beginnings of a town trying to come back from the dead.

Several houses were in the process of being constructed, and FEMA trailers were visible on the outskirts of town. The only business open in the town was a gas station on the highway that seemed not only to be the busiest place in town, but a meeting place of sorts. Signs for support, council meetings, and cries for assistance were all over the billboards. There was a large milk jug at the register asking for donations. This jug, not surprisingly, was nearly full. This seems a resilient little town, and we will definitely revisit in the near future, as our feeling is that it might, unfortunately, look the same.

We left Greensburg for the promise of reliving the Wild West in Dodge City, KS. A short drive from Greensburg, the road takes you to the outskirts of the city of 50,000. But........wait a minute....Where in the hell was Boot Hill? Why is every sign in Spanish? Did Pancho Villa conquer this town? Surely....this can't be the Dodge City of lore.....

Yup.......

We drove into downtown, with all business storefronts carrying a "FOR LEASE" sign, and desperately looked for something that led us to Boot Hill. However - we passed it TWICE and didn't even know it.

The Dodge City of today is a street block in downtown that is blocked off, so all visitors can pay their fair share for the distinction of walking amongst MDF particleboard store fronts, of which all but two were closed. No authenticity was felt from the second we left the parking lot to the two feet it took to get to the ticket booth.

After spending $10 (!!) a person, we were told that we HAD to watch the film before we were able to go outside and experience the splendor. We were ushered past the gift shop, behind a porn store type curtain, into a room that was heated to approximately 172 degrees, and sat on the ripped carpet blocks to watch a film that continuously ran throughout the day. We absorbed, oh........nothing about the lore of Dodge City, and blew out looking for any fresh air.

We took a small trail to the top of "Boot Hill", which was a cemetery the size of our backyard. Matt was slackjawed throughout the entire visit, and went a little bonkers on the walk.

The Front Street walk took all of five minutes, as every store (as previously mentioned) was closed. We had actually planned at one point (hold your laughter here) to spend TWO DAYS in Dodge City when doing our vacation planning, as we thought there was no way the entire site could be experienced in less than 48 hours. Our total visit was about 25 minutes.....and we stretched every minute out. The crowds obviously stayed away as well, as we saw two other visitors in the time we were there (the two sitting on the bench below who are obviously saying to each other, WTF is this??)

We are fans of kitsch...Hell, we actively seek out cheese in its every form. But we stupidly had expectations for Dodge City. This was no doubt our fault for not doing real research, but disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow.....Damn you to hell, Chevy Chase.