Downtown Hutchinson, Kansas

The writer Josh Barkan suggested I go have look at Hutchinson, Kansas. So on a bright October afternoon, I did. Interesting town. I suspect there was a huge boom there when the price of wheat was high, from the 1900s to 1929. Hutchinson was a railroad town when that meant something, and probably a regional banking center. Wheat farmers need banks. Looks like during the last eighty years the town's ambitions have sort of collapsed; everything seems a little damaged, shrunken. Still, those proud high buildings: startling for a town its size. Downtown has somewhat revived, recently--there are bookstores, and antique shops. But it's just hanging on. The neighborhood streets and alleys, which I'll cover in another post,  reminded me of the mise en scene of Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde: overgrown back alleys and weathered frame houses could have been a Depression-era town anywhere on the southern prairie or plains, Missouri to Texas.