four-by-five grid of gravel and dust featuring an impressive collection of crumbling brick false-fronts, one or two of which, depending on the year and the severity of the most recent drought, housed saloons with names like the Grand, the Branding Iron, and the Ace. Just off Main, as if in counterpoint, lay the old mission Catholic church and the steeply roofed Lutheran church, both sanctuaries shaded by massive, ancient cottonwoods, and on the edge of town, near the rodeo grounds, stretched the brand-new, shedlike evangelical church, the Church of the Plains, whose oiled parking lot baked in
...more
