Genealogy

The Census Taker's Home


  Well, I'm surely glad to be home, that I am.  I tell 
you another day like this one and I am good mind just to 
fill them papers out on memory and  be done with it.
  Here, put these socks over there next to the fire to dry  
out, will you?  
  Got down yonder this mornin' and everyone in Household 
451  through 486 was gone.  Some big shindig goin' on down 
there. Good thing the  folks in 441 could tell me who they 
all was.
  Here, reckon you could go over some of the writin' on this 
here page? Got smeared a bit in the rain.  I think you can 'cipher 
most of it out.
  Then them folks down in the holler got suspicious over a census.  
Said, and derned if they had a point, what difference did 
it make who they was? Was them guvment folks up in Warshington 
going to come down here to say howdy do?  So they finally let me 
write down they last name and first initial, but I think they 
wuz havin' a bit of fun with me when they listed who lived 
in the house.  Saw some winkin' goin' on and I believe I got 
the same house a youngins in two or three places.
  It been a day, woman.  Honey, git that paper out of Johnny's mouth, 
wil  ya? I worked all day on that thing, and no call to let 
him go chewin' it up.
  Went up the river a piece and tried to get that done 'fore
it come a downpour, but run into trouble there, too. Ole Man 
Jenkins' cur dog run me off and I tell you, ain't no call to 
get eat up over such a thing as  this.  They ort to be a limit 
what a man does for his country.  Was lucky a man down the road 
mostly knew Jenkins was nigh on sixty years old and was living 
there with his woman and five youngins from his first marriage 
plus a passel from the second. We give em good Christian names.
  Best be doin' something 'bout this pen.  It give out on me 
halfway  through.  See you havin' trouble, too.  Johnny!  Hand 
that here, boy!
  And I tell you I would ruther fight grandpap's British than 
mess with  that feller out on the ridge.  He got out his 
shotgun soon as he seen me comin' and I went t'other direction.  
Had Jones tell me about him instead, and he didn't rightly know 
the feller's first name. Said they called him "Squirrel", and 
it was ok just to put that cause wasn't nobody around here 
claimin' him no how, and they for sure didn't want the guvment 
knowin' there was any relationship.  That coffee done?
  Then got over to Smiths, and ole Hoss was in a nervous fit so 
wasn't no getting information there.  His woman havin' another 
youngin and he looked like he could run right through me when I 
went to askin' how many youngins he had now.  Hightailed it out 
of there, and Miz Hart helped me straighten that household out. 
Think we got most of the names straight,
and as he has had a youngin a year for the last ten, ages 
purty close  too. Now look what Johnny went and done!
  I tell you, next time this come around I ain't gonna be no 
where in sight.  Farmin's a heap easier, and I figger they're 
folks 'round here what can read and write and 'cipher and ain't 
no good fer nothing else we can spare for this foolishness.  
Pass me another 'tater, will you?"
 
 Copyright =A92000 Jan Philpot

©..... W. Edwin Harris