Our Smallest Towns


So this interesting book came across the counter a few weeks ago and I'm just getting around to reading it completely. Sorry for the small picture. It's the only one I could find.

It's called "Our Smallest Towns: Big Falls, Blue Eye, Bonanza, & beyond" by Dennis Kitchen. It's about the smallest towns in the U.S. It was published in 1995.

Here's an excerpt:

Monowi, Nebraska is a small incorporated village in northeast Nebraska. When census takers took the census, everybody in town filled out two sets of forms. Census workers made at least two telephone calls to each family to confirm. So now the census has been published and here's what it says: Monowi's population is six. In fact, it is eight. Nobody under age five. In fact, there are two under age five. None between forty-five and fifty-four; oh yes, there is one. No household with a married couple; yes, there are two. Elsie Eiler of Monowi says if there are this many errors in a town with a population of only eight people, why do we bother with an expensive census at all?...Paul Harvey...Good day!


Hmmm...anyone else wondering about the census going on right now? Of course, the census in the story above was in 1990, twenty years ago. Surely the system is more efficient now, right?

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