According to 2020 census data, Texas leads the nation in the number of people living in rural areas, with about 4.8 million. So as Texas lawmakers get set to start another legislative session on Jan. 14, we wanted to check in about the possibilities and challenges some officials in parts of rural Texas see facing their communities – and what they hope is addressed in 2025.
James Decker, the mayor of Stamford, Texas, just 40 miles north of Abilene, joined the Standard for a broadcast from the KACU studios on the Abilene Christian University campus.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: I understand you grew up in Stamford. Paint us a picture of your hometown. Y’all still have that big cowboy reunion each summer?
James Decker: We do. The Texas Cowboy Reunion will be in its 95th year next summer and draws about 20,000 or better people to four days, five days of rodeo and Western heritage activities over to a town of 3,000. So we feel like that’s a pretty cool calling card as a tourist attraction.
By the way, this is no small event – Will Rogers did one of his last shows there; Elvis Presley played the Cowboy Reunion. So this is a really big deal in this rather small town. Used to be a bigger place, though, I guess when the railroad came through. You still have a depot downtown?
We do not. I’m old enough to remember the last of the freight trains in the early ’90s, but the passenger trains were pulled up in the early ’70s, and the depot was actually removed before I was even born. And I look at the pictures of it and it makes me deeply sad because it was just a fantastic old building.
But we still maintain our railroad heritage and still signs of the old overpass right through the middle of town. And just the heritage is where the railroads cross, which made us the trading center for the region.
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We know we have a lot of Texas lawmakers who listen to the Standard. And I’m wondering if you had their ear – as you do right now, I suppose – what would you say is your biggest concern about what’s happening in Stamford and in rural Texas, sort of writ large? And I guess the corollary there is what could the Legislature do to help?
So, you know, my biggest concern there is we understand that Texas is a very different state than it was, population-wise, from when Stamford was founded in 1900. It’s much more urbanized; it’s much less agrarian.
That doesn’t mean that these rural communities don’t still exist and that they don’t still matter in a big way, because the vast majority of the state’s agricultural products, be it cotton or cattle or wheat and a host of other things, are grown in rural areas, and a large portion of the energy production from the state comes from these rural areas.
And, you know, that matters. It matters to the success and the security of not only the state, but the nation. And if the people can’t survive out here, if the people can’t live out here and it becomes exceedingly more difficult for them to live here in these communities, then it becomes harder for them to produce that food and fiber and fuel, as the saying goes.
And, you know, we see a lot in politics in Austin and in Washington where it tends to be arguments about urban versus suburban. That’s where the political animosity seems to come from. And we kind of get left in a in a tug-of-war left twisting in the wind. Sometimes we get ascribed to being on one side or the other. And the reality is we’re mostly just forgotten.
And that becomes a frustration because we still – our local governments, our schools, our people, our small businesses – have to live with the consequences of the decisions that happen in Austin, whether they realize that it has an effect on us or not.
You know, the governor has talked a lot about this idea for a school voucher-like program. And I know that a lot of rural lawmakers, including a lot of Republicans, have resisted going that route. Is that something that folks talk about in Stamford?
Absolutely. You know, that’s something that we get that frustration is we see that conversation be about failing urban schools or whatever terminology gets used for political antics.
And we see that, you know, in a place like Stamford, somebody is not going to open up a private school in Stamford. They’re just not. I mean, we’ve got just under 200 kids in our high school. You couldn’t make one of those work financially.
But public schools in rural communities are the lifeblood of our community. It’s what every aspect of our culture centers around, is our kids. And Stamford is the No. 1-ranked football team in the state. We played in Abilene two weeks ago on the day after Thanksgiving. And in a town of 3,000, we had probably 5,000 people at that game, from people who care about the community and came back to watch our kids play.
And that’s what a public school means within a community like Stamford. Regardless of whatever people want to talk about their perceptions of public and private schools in other places, in these rural communities, the community’s heartbeat is our school and our kids.
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So is your concern that if this passes, that that will hurt your public schools?
Well, you know, we get told constantly that oh, there will be a carve out for rural districts, they’ll protect rural districts, etc.
And it makes me nervous on those carve outs, because I get there’s problems that need to be solved in other parts of the state. But those carve outs tend to be a way to mollify you, and then they forget about the carve out later on when the money becomes tight, and then you just get dropped and left by the wayside.
I’m fine with whatever they want to do in other parts of the state in the urban and suburban districts, because those have very different challenges than we do. But my argument is, don’t forget the importance of a rural community and its schools to its people, because if a rural community loses that school, then the town just dries up and goes away. We’ve seen that in this part of the world in my lifetime.
I want to encourage others to feel like they can come back to these communities. You know, populations have declined in rural America for the last 70 years for a lot of forces, economic and otherwise. And one of the biggest ones is that there have not been jobs and economic opportunity for people. They told their kids, move away, find a job. There’s nothing for you here because you just can’t make it anymore.
And we saw after COVID, we’ve seen population trends, people are realizing that they would like to be back in smaller towns But they’ve got to have that economic opportunity, a place to raise their family and have good schools.
You know, on balance, it’s hard not to get caught up in what sounds like your own optimism about Stamford. Am I correct? And I mean, do you feel optimistic about the future of Stamford?
We hear so much about issues facing rural Texas – and we’ve touched on a couple – but you think about what’s been happening with farms, a lot of them getting sold out and and becoming major housing developments, that kind of thing. How do you feel Stamford’s doing right now?
You know, I had a revelation about a year ago. I don’t like to use the term optimistic. I prefer the term hopeful, because optimistic – the way I had it put in an article I read about this is that optimistic connotes some sort of determinism that basically it’s set in stone, that it’s going to work out whether you’re involved or not.
We’re not that fortunate, you know. And I don’t think that’s the way to live life anyway. But I am hopeful.
You’re right: There are a lot of challenges. Our farm economy has not been good in a long time, and it continues to it continues to struggle. You know, the cost of everything goes up except the wages and commodity prices that our farmers receive at the market. I’m not a Pollyanna who just says, “everything’s great in Stamford. We’re golden. We don’t have any problems.”
But what I know is this: Stamford is a great place to live. And there are challenges across the board – whether you’re in a rural community, a suburban community or an urban community – there are big challenges that face your leaders and business and politics in the community.
And I think Stamford is a place that’s a really good spot to live out those challenges, persevere through them and create a life within community. Because we have seen people don’t like being isolated, and people don’t like feeling removed from the control of their own life, having agency over their own life, and just each other.
You know, man was not meant to be alone. We’re meant to live within community. And a rural place like Stamford is a pretty darned good place to do that. So there are plenty of challenges for Stamford, but I like the opportunity that we have before us for the future.
