Harold was an old seventy-year old, redneck, stuck in his ways. It was hard to teach him new tricks but he tried. He wouldn’t be able to do an e-mail, much less understand the fingerprint protected GPS units we were given to calibrate new map-points for the Census Bureau. This was the first year of the handheld computers. Even squatters in boxes residing under a bridge were to be listed as a living quarters, and received a map-point. Burnouts with obvious new construction would be assigned map-points, ascertaining at the time of the actual Census, it would be built and possibly inhabited.
Harold failed the written test, so the head boss came to confiscate his hand held, and the ID badge. It was the English dude. He had come to Royce City to fingerprint us and while he was inking my fingers, I said, “Finally, someone is holding my hand!” He had to stop what he was doing he was laughing so hard. Boss man came down my muddy, pitted-out gravel road in his luxury car to pick up Harold’s things.
I was surprised it was the seventy-something year old Englishman who came to my door. Oddly enough I canvassed and plot-pointed his Bonham home on the map during part of my on the job training process. My yard was overgrown, with no gardener to attend to the place, while his, and please forgive the cliché, looked like an English manor. The shrubs on his house were as manicured as French poodles.
“Is there a way to drive out of here and avoid getting mud on my car?” He said in the most proper blue blood English accent.
You can keep heading north and loop through the cemetery; there is a mild pothole or two. Or you can back up, and turn around in the neighbor’s driveway.” I said.
He backed his Lexus up about half a block, straight on to the little state highway.
My crew chief supervisor Dan and I left my house, and headed into the country to do some training. I came to the most northwesterly point in my block and began canvassing. He instructed me to drive my family minivan down a desolate road, and it quickly became apparent that this low-lying creek-bottom was too muddy for travel. Our spinning tires lost sink with the engine and that’s when we became stuck. I threw the transmission into reverse, and it was obvious I could still back out of it. I looked at Dan and said,
“You’re going to drive us out of here.”
We got out of the mud, but I was then completely aware of how close this forty-five year old, single woman came to being stranded in the middle of desolate nowhere, while the Englishman was off somewhere cleaning his muddy whitewalls.
Later that evening, a fellow Census worker came to map-point my house. He had no previous written records about my one-hundred twelve year old home. Yeah, I work for the Feds.
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