I haven't been on holiday for a while so this afternoon I took a flight to The States courtesy of Google Streetview Airways. I decided to visit the very centre of the forty eight contiguous states which took me to a small town called Lebanon in the northwest of Kansas. Just north of the town you find the stone monument shown in the top picture. It marks the very heart of America.
Lebanon's population has been dropping every decade from 822 in 1920 down to 178 in 2020. This reflects the progress of agricultural methods that require less human labour than ever before. Lebanon knows poverty well for 22% of the population live below the official poverty line.
Methodist Church in Lebanon
Google Streetview allowed me to cruise around the town. It appears very spacious as many towns do in Middle America. Even poor people live in detached homes, some distance from their neighbours. Very different from Europe where there are generally far more people in every square mile. In Smith County, Kansas where Lebanon is located, the population density is only 4.1 people per square mile.
Grain silos in Lebanon
Rundown house on the edge of town
The People's Bank on Main Street, Lebanon
The surrounding countryside is devoted to arable farming - huge swathes of prairie farmland that stretch out for miles. Mostly they grow grain and corn on vast corporate farms. The time of the small, independent farmer is mostly historical. Below, Highway 281 leads north towards the monument shown in the first picture
As I have said before in the pages of this humble Yorkshire blog, I am an unashamed Americophile in spite of Trump and The Grand Old Party and guns and crystal meth and KFC and other stuff like that. In the past, I often fantasised about living there in some faraway place like Lebanon. Just out of interest I wondered what kind of home I could buy in Smith County, Kansas if we sold up our house for around £420,000 or $560,000 (US).
I discovered that we could buy the best house currently for sale in the county. It is in nearby Smith Center a few miles west of Lebanon. It boasts five bedrooms and five bathrooms, hardwood floors, a huge double garage, spacious garden surrounds and a small guest house too. It would cost us just $350,000 so we would still have $210,000 left over to spend on burgers, milkshakes, guns and whatever else Kansas folk require for contentment.
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