Taking a leave of our census
Published 9:35 am Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Column: Tales from Exit 22
Look to your right.
Is there anybody there?
I didn’t think so. Many people aren’t there anymore. According to the recent census, people aren’t where they used to be. The populations of many of our rural areas are in decline.
There was somebody there and now there isn’t. Where did he or she go? Once, there were large families on small farms. Many of those farms have vanished without a trace. Nothing but memories remain. Some small businesses have become so small they have disappeared.
Why has the population gone down in rural areas? I’m no expert, but I think it’s because there aren’t as many of us living here as there used to be.
As a young man, I worked in one city and went to college in another. From 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. each day, I slaved away as a refrigeration guy charged with making the world safe for frozen foods. I worked with outsized machines that had ammonia and Freon flowing through their veins. After work, I wiped the stink from my body, changed clothes, and drove my unreliable car to a university 30 miles away. Most days, as I drove through a town so small that the streets had to be widened in order to make room for centerlines, a man driving a dark blue Ford ran a stop sign. I know he ran a stop sign on a daily basis because I was usually traveling the highway of higher learning when he ran the stop sign right in front of me. The first couple of times he did that, it was frightening. After that, it was merely irritating.
One day, I stopped in that small town on my route to put gas into my crusty old Chevy. I could afford to buy gas in those days. I asked the fellow working in the gas station about the scofflaw driving the dark blue Ford. The man knew immediately of whom I was speaking.
“He doesn’t like stop signs,” he added as an explanation.
The populations of many small towns are dropping. Maybe those running stop signs are the reason why.
A caller requested my mailing address. I gave her my address that was once Rural Route 1 before being replaced by a long series of numbers that caused my location to sound as if it were situated in a metropolitan area. I told her that I lived between two small cities. When pressed as to how small they were, I told her that one had 300 and the other 500 inhabitants. She told me that she lived in Phoenix and grew up in Atlanta. She had more than 300 people in her office building. She inquired as to what it was like to live in a small town. I don’t live in a city. I tried to move to one once, but the residents started a petition.
I told the caller that back in the days when people smoked indoors in Minnesota in areas that were not identified as smoking sections, I was sitting with some cronies and watching a fellow smoke in a restaurant. He was good. He handled the cigarettes with a deftness that could only be acquired from years of practice. He noticed us watching him, so he sauntered over to where we were seated. We howdied but we didn’t shake. I knew him a little but not a lot. I told him that he was a talented smoker. He replied that he heard that often in the course of smoking his three packs of cigarettes a day. I thought I had been presented with a chance to save the smoker from himself. We all need to be saved from ourselves on occasion. We are put on earth to help others and here was a golden opportunity for me to do that. It was gift-wrapped. I told him that he should stop smoking. He wondered aloud why he should give up something in which he excelled.
“Because you’ll live longer,” I answered, proud of myself for not adding “Duh.”
“My grandfather lived to be 96,” he said.
“Did he smoke three packs of cigarettes a day?”
“No,” he replied. “He minded his own business.”
After hearing my account as to what small town living was like, the caller said, “You’re lucky to live where you do. It can’t get any smaller.”
I am lucky to live where I do but many lovely places are shrinking in size.
Somewhere along the line, rural areas decided to concentrate on quality instead of quantity.
Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.