I grew up in Bledsoe Tx. My kids spent at least two weeks of every summer in Bledsoe!  
I left Bledsoe in 1982 when I married and moved to Morton Tx  My family moved to Mineral Wells Tx in 1985.
Where I still reside.
I owned the cafe from about 1980-83. I am not Definite about dates because I don’t recall dates well!  
The train caboose was a business owned by the family across the street from my family home! They had gas pumps there as well! There hasn’t been any business’ in Bledsoe except for Post office and grain elevators for many years!
The town really began to dwindle when the state came in and took the schools  money to disperse to larger schools that were not as wealthy as our community per student. The school closed in a few years after the government took it and began busing to the small town of Whiteface, Tx about 30 minutes east of Bledsoe!
My parents generation where the main people left up until they died off!  
Bledsoe is located in Cochran county!  In my opinion The peoples of Cochran county are some of the hardiest people in our nation!
Bledsoe Baptist Church is still alive and has been since my days as a youngster!
I have many memories of this off the beaten path community! It is a great place to live whether young or old. Very laid back and the stars at night are amazing!  
I could go on and on but I won’t. If you don’t know how to chill Bledsoe Tx is a great place to unwind !!

Even the cats have forsaken Bledsoe.

As a native Texas, most families that have been here more than 4 generations all come from those small towns.  All of the towns started dying after the Depression and then WW2.   Family Farming faded out and urbanization occurred on a mass scale. My family no different.

You filmed my Hometown of Bledsoe tx !! My heart is happy. Look there isn’t anything there but my family is there and it’s everything!!

As a Norwegian growing up in the 70's and 80's in a small area in Norway with about 800 inhabitans, 4 grocery shops, 1clothing shop and a pub in to the 80's.
Nowadays we are only 500 inhabitans and only 1 grocery shop left, but there is almost no blight and decay in small town Norway compared to the USA.
I love these videoes, but the decay all over small town USA is shocking to see and it makes me sad.
Keep up your eye opening work you two 👍.

Having grown up in a small town in rural Texas I was ready to leave when I got out of school.I did so as soon as I could. Bad thing is I spent the first half of my life trying to get out and the second half trying to get back. It wasn't easy but I finally got back to my hometown and I wouldn't ever leave it again. Lesson learned.

Joe, only you can take us into the most boring - and sometimes depressing - towns in America and not only entertain us, educate us, by make the ride-a-long, GREAT!   LOL.   Thank you for keeping your videos clean and free of negativity! The wife and I LOVE your ride-a-longs.  They are also helping us in our retirement decisions.  💰Thank you!  🙏 Looking forward to your NEXT video..as Always!

My town has 175 people - we're a thriving metropolis compared to Bledsoe.

If not for the vending machine, I'd have assumed someone turned the rail car into a home (especially seeing the TV Antennae) and used the other rail cars as storage.

The elementary school I went to in Mason Hall, Tennessee had a thriving community in the early 60's when I was a child.  They consolidated the school with a larger town and now Mason Hall has pretty much dried up and blown away.  The little Allen's grocery store where we got our groceries still stands (empty and abandoned), but the school building is no longer there.  People want their kids to be able to attend school locally and our education system has gone way down with the bigger classrooms.  Having our schools supported federally was supposed to improve things but the opposite has happened. I think those schools and the pride they felt in their little schools was what helped small towns thrive.

I so wanna live there. Perfect peace and isolation.

Watching from the Netherlands 💗 Always AMAZED by the space you have over there.

Now here's a town I can actually afford to retire to.

Bledsoe was interesting. The peanut shelling company is probably only open for the season. Sure looks desolate out that way. Not even a cat running around or a Dollar General. LOL  Thanks, Joe.

You are close to my farm,,, Peanuts replace cotton on some farms out there thus the processing facility. They harvest tons of peanuts every year on land that once grew cotton. And now you know.

I try to imagine these towns back in their hay days about a 100 years ago, before the Depression... A  school, store, saloon, cafe, a blacksmith, horses, wagons, a car now and then, maybe a church, hard working men, veggie gardens in every yard and a few well cared for fruit trees...

The middle of nowhere is halfway to everywhere.

I was a little oil field worker in Whiteface Texas for several years... good people out there..

As far as Bledsoe, one could say they work for peanuts, literally.  And they are part of the peanut gallery.  One thing I noticed on a lot of your videos, the churches and government buildings are usually the nicest structures in the town while the homes are falling apart.  Food for thought.

Bledsoe was founded in 1925 as the terminus of the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway, and named for Samuel T. Bledsoe, the line's president. The town gained its original prosperity through its function as a cattle-shipping station, and reached its greatest population of 400 in 1930. The Great Depression had dire effect on the community and throughout the remainder of the 20th century the population continued to dwindle; the last recorded figure put the 1990 population at 125.