Copyright © 1994, Jeremy Butler. All rights reserved.
Telecommunication and Film Department, P.O. Box 870152, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487.

The Postmodern America Tour: Travels in Hyperreality

Part Three

Buildings quickly popped up back in the '30s to accommodate the influx of oil men/women and most of them were done in striking art deco style. The coolest is the Texan theater, which is emblazoned with a huge star and featured hoofprints of famous movie cowboy's horse's in the sidewalk in front. William S. Hart's Alaska,

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Ken Maynard's Tarzan and, yes, Roy Rogers' Trigger are all represented.

Unfortunately, someone has filled in the footprints, though they're still pretty evident. Luckily, Kilgore has been more conscientious about maintaining the WPA mural in the post office--painted by Xavier Gonzalez in 1941. Muscular, socialist realist dudes hunker around drilling machinery,

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a balladeer strums a guitar for a woman in white,

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and, inexplicably, rich swells dance next to a tennis racket while a young boy flies a model airplane.

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And then there's the East Texas Oil Museum at Kilgore College...

Continued...