Picher, Oklahoma

I think that this article was actually very interesting. It was about how this town Picher in Oklahoma is now like a ghost town. In 2002 the census counted 1,640 people, now there is a scarce amount. The part that really shocked me about this is how some people are refusing to leave, in their words “we both grew up here and have never been sick.” It was very surprising how people could be so oblivious to this problem and the threat it puts on their lives. If I grew up here all my life, which I almost have, and it got closed down like this one, I would defiantly take the money that the government was willing to give me and I would move somewhere far away. Even if it was my hometown, I would never put my own health and the health of my family at risk. I would just move like everybody else! Of course I do give them courage to stay, I am kind of on the fence of if their decision was courageous or if they are just in denial. I highlighted a few parts in this article because they were interesting. One part was when it said, “Kids started coming home from swimming in ponds near the mines and complaining of what they thought were sunburns, never realizing that the pools were full of caustic chemicals.” Another part was when it said, “the parents of rival high school sports teams started refusing to let their kids go to Picher for games.” That was when the sports program really started faltering and many families moved to find better after school activities. This made me think how if Konawaena was in this situation, if my mom and dad would let me go to a soccer game there or a track meet. One part that made me sad was the part about the tornado on May 10th, 2008, the 175 mile per hour winds hit the town and nobody even opted to rebuild, everybody just moved on. Over all this was a very fun and interesting article to read, it kind of made me think about what I was reading and made me relate it to my own life, I really liked it.