United States Censuous Bureau

By Steve Kube

The snippets below attest that every day was an adventure while doing census work in the wilds of the South during the most contentious political climate of our time.

 

 

...Not too many guns came out. I wasn't told to get the hell off my property but for once or twice... 

 

 

...the driver suddenly wheeled her substantial upper torso around to face me and with all seriousness said "I'd knock you over for that har."

 

 

The mountains are majestic, their colors an infinite blur of enchanting hues that changes as the sun crosses the sky and the earth rounds the sun and.

 

 

One lot had more decaying vehicles spread out higgledy-piggledy than I had time to count, and the space between the crapped-out conveyances was chockablock with other junk.

 

 

If your smart speaker overhears you asking your dog if he went out and crapped like a boss will it go on your permanent record?

 

 

...The next day when the boys got together to smoke, the lizard came back for more. This time all they had to do was hold the cigarette where the lizard could get to it and it came and put its mouth on the butt of the cigarette to get a hit of nicotine.

 

 

...It was a small-caliber pistol, so if he was a lousy shot, or a very good one, and missed my vitals, he could have pumped more than a few slugs in me before I hit the ground.

 

 

A cup of coffee suits me in the morning. Please don't bring me a latte, frappe, mocha-chino, double grande-cuppa-froo-froo, early in the morning. A glass of fresh brewed iced tea and a tomato sandwich, a beer and a burger; onion rings, and hush puppies done-just-right will do just fine, thank you much.

 

 

And then I came to a freakin' fork in the road. A freakin' fork. No signs, just a fork. I still had no GPS signal, I was back in the old world now, left to my own devices. 

 

 

A lot of my time that day was spent around the Coosa, a lazy flowing river as inviting as any I'd ever seen. It was a good day. Everyone I met was a friend. It was enough to have one let go of the need to cleave to one or another belief about anything and to just let things be as they are.

 

 

We settled down and went back to watching the night sky for shooting stars and speculating on UFOs, but by that time none of us was particularly interested in believing what the rest of us had to say about anything.

 

 

We all know what it's like to be betrayed; To hell with that. Fool me once, fuck you.

 

 

Alabama was somewhat like a seductive and partly dangerous woman who has her way with you because she can, and it's all your fault for showing up anyway.  I'd go back to Alabama in a skinny minute.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Kube
• Release date: Apr 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201755225

Book preview

Contents

Introduction 

Chapter 1  United States Censuous Bureau 

Chapter 2  HAR 

Chapter 3  Stink Town Funk 

Chapter 4  High Country 

Chapter 5  Clutter 

Chapter 6  Absurd 

Chapter 7  A Passel of Cuties 

Chapter 8  Leaf 

Chapter 9  Don’t Go Off In Your Shorts! 

Chapter 10  Simple Pleasures 

Chapter 11  Four Wheel Drive Oh-Nellie! 

Chapter 12  The Compound 

Chapter 13  The Harvest 

Chapter 14  Speculation 

Chapter 15  Seductive & Partly Dangerous 

Introduction

––––––––

I took a job with the 2020 Census, to get out and about, explore the world around me, and earn a little money. I was supposed to get started in March but I wasn’t called in to get going until August due to Covid and other delays. The training lasted a couple of days, and afterward a bunch of us intrepid types jumped in and made our way as enumerators.

I’d heard rumors of dangerous situations I might come across, and I didn’t dismiss them entirely, but I’m glad I didn’t let them dampen my spirit. I had a lot of fun and got a lot of work done. I covered so much territory that I had three different supervisors and I was told I was among the most productive on each of the teams I joined. It was good to hear since I sometimes equate having fun at work with not working as hard as you should.

For a couple of weeks, the work kept me in town, not far from home. Some days I put less than 20 miles on my car. A few weeks later I’d regularly go over a hundred miles round trip in a day, and some days well over two hundred miles.

The work took me across seven counties in North Carolina from the rolling hills of the Piedmont, right up into the Smokey Mountains. Some days I was so deep into the mountains, had I gone much further I would be in Tennessee or Virginia.

Near the end of my adventures, I went about 500 miles to Birmingham, to help out over that way, and then well over 1,000 miles across several counties in Alabama for the time I was there.

In my travels, I saw a lot of beautiful countrysides that I’d never seen before, places I didn’t know existed, and got to see the start of autumn colors along the way.

I met hundreds of people, the vast majority were quite cooperative and friendly. Very few were disagreeable. I found it easy to make friends in an instant, and only a few of the folks that I came across were threatening or potentially dangerous. Not many guns came out, there weren’t very many threats of assault with a deadly weapon. I didn’t get told to Get the hell off my property!, or similar but for once or twice.

With about two months of census work remaining the Trump administration went to court to stop the count and our timeline got drastically curtailed. The start was delayed by the pandemic and now the allotted time would be cut by a couple of months. A legal battle ensued and a week or two later we were told the work was coming to an end. At the eleventh hour, a higher court judge overturned the earlier decision and we were told to continue with the task at hand. This happened again a few weeks later.

For a time there, it was touch and go, on-again, off-again. We didn’t know how long we’d be able to continue, or how many people would be left out of the count. This gave me a sense of urgency about it. About getting as much done while I still could. To make hay while the sun shines as the saying goes.

Politics aside, the census is about counting how many people are in the country and where they are. It helps to know their age and a little more about them so we would know if we should be building elementary schools in an area, or senior citizens centers, and so on. It’s about proper management of the country.

Now, I’m not permitted to share personally identifiable information about anyone I engaged with while doing census work. Accordingly, some of these accounts are slightly obscured versions of the truth. Someone could pipe up and claim I wrote about them, but they’d be the ones sharing personally identifiable information. I may or may not acknowledge anything one way or another, and I may or may not do so for no particular reason at all. Maybe it’ll depend on my mood, or what I had for breakfast.

~ S

Chapter 1

United States Censuous Bureau

––––––––

I slipped a folded Notice Of Visit form between the storm door and the jamb of a mobile home without disturbing the cobwebs that wreathed the entry.

The place looked vacant, but it was hard to tell. I’d seen hundreds of front doors in the past five or six weeks. Most folks enter and leave their homes through a back door. The presence of cobwebs around a front door didn’t mean all that much but it was one indicator among others that the place might be vacant. One respondent was shocked and embarrassed to find vines climbing up and over their front entry when they answered my knock. It happens.

I turned my back to the gossamer wreath and descended the short wooden staircase, careful to avoid rotten spots.

As I approached my car, a pickup truck towing a riding mower on a flat trailer big enough to carry another three or four of them turned into the driveway