My uncle was stationed in Amarillo back in the 1960's with the Air Force.He told me once that when he was there (sometime in '66 or so) that they used to joke about airmen going AWOL what they said was "if you go AWOL from Amarillo the only thing that will happen is you'll walk for 4 days down the highway and not see another living thing then you will head back to base out of boredom and they wont punish you the walk and boredom are punishment enough".
He had a specialist communications job that was in high demand all over the Air Force and put in papers to go to Vietnam.
Sounds about right still from what I understand the only thing that has is that Amarillo has changed is a slightly larger population in Amarillo than 40 some years ago.