Small

I'm not sure what to make of this.  It's a nice piece of writing, sure, as it describes a dying Texas town and the bonds of community.

How are these place supposed to exist?  How is a town so small it has 9 members of the Senior class supposed to run a school?  What jobs exist?

The vast empty Red State is increasingly America's problem.  Yes, there are issues of race, but the cities are mostly functioning fine.  Drug wars continue to kill people in certain cities, like Chicago, but it's not the cities that have struggled to adapt to the 21st century.

At the end of the 19th century, a clergyman asked, "What are we to do with our great cities?"  This was in response to the horrific poverty and crime of the slums.  Despite the news, that's not the big story.

The big story comes from little places.  Places too small to notice, but whose combined weight is dragging its people down.