Category Archives: rural

mid-west, rural, wildlife

You know you’re a …

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Most of you know that I am the mayor of a small town in rural Colorado. (After all, you can read the sidebar as well as anyone.) The town and its 1.5 mile radius of influence contains more than 75% of the population in the whole county. Nothing too surprising, until you consider that the county encompasses close to 2000 square miles and that the entire county is home to around 20,000 people. Now you can see why I refer to this as rural area. Some of our neighboring counties are even more sparsely populated. Of course, as the local cattlemen’s association is fond of telling me, “there may be 20,000 people, but there are more than 5 million cattle in a good year.” Add to this the fact that the area is a semi-desert climatically, and you have some interesting peculiarities. So in honor of the sparsity of people and moisture and the large numbers of cows, pigs, ducks, geese, dogs, and other critters, I give you some of the ways you know you are in the rural mid-west:

  • Restaurants:

Senior discount hours start before 4pm and are over by 6pm.

Close before 9pm.

Close Monday since they were open on Saturday.

Open only for lunch and maybe early supper on Sunday.

  • Your tractor cost more than your house *and* has a better paint job.
  • Your farm is known as the “old previous owner’s place” until you die or sell it. Then it’s known as your old place.
  • Your neighbor lives 3 miles away and is “too darn close.”
  • The mood in the area follows the rainfall totals.
  • No one cares much about the stock market, but commodity prices are posted everywhere.
  • Wildlife doesn’t mean an alternative lifestyle.
  • Animal control has to trap skunks as they invade the city and its parks during grub season.
  • Police have been known to chase the deer and antelope back out of town and off the roads before rush hour.
  • Mom did get run over by a deer herd on the way home from Christmas Eve. In town. While I was mayor. (Fortunately, the newspaper didn’t get hold of it. I can just see the headlines: Mayor’s Mother Attacked by Rampaging Herd of Deer on 10th Ave. on Christmas Eve.)
  • That’s a reason to be sure you have a local insurance agent. Imagine trying to tell your agent that a herd of deer ran into the side of your car and jumped on the hood on Christmas Eve – and that no you had nothing to drink.
  • People complain mightily about the 5 minute rush hour.
  • A new stoplight will get more complaints and phone calls to the mayor than any number of potholes on Main Street.
  • It’s a disgrace if it takes you five minutes to get to work in the morning. “The city should do something about that” calls abound. Even if it is due to a broken water main closing a thoroughfare.
  • The county is appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court to prohibit driving your sprinkler system across the county roads. And sprinkler systems have the right of way.
  • You see cellular service being touted on the TV by the tornado chase teams. “Reliable enough for us to use as we chase in real time. All our computers and data acquisition systems depend on the reliable cellular internet service from Viaero.” Of course, the ads always end with “You shouldn’t chase tornadoes.”
  • You actually know which tornado chase team it is.
  • Everyone you meet will smile and say “Hi.”
  • Everyone will try to help you and will find someone who can if they can’t.

Time for Molly and I to resume our regularly scheduled Sunday mope; L has returned to the mountains. Molly hasn’t moved from her dejected perch by the garage door since L left hours ago. I figure about noon tomorrow for the recovery to begin.

Colorado Children's Campaign, poverty, rural

Colorado Children’s Campaign

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Today the Colorado Children’s Campaign was in town and talking to political and educational leaders today. For those not familiar with the organization, a visit to Colorado Children’s Campaign is informative. They are part of a national organization that looks at ways to improve the lot of children and lobbies on children’s issues. Their research suggests that one of the strongest correlations for the abscense of a bright future is to grow up under the poverty line. Poverty is correlated with higher assault and crime rates, lower IQ, lower academic performance, emotion problems, etc. The number of children growing up in poverty is a pressing issue in Colorado because the number of children living in poverty has been rising for the last several years. This bucks the national trend which has remained at a constant percentage of all children. Colorado still has a lower overall percentage than the national average, but that difference is in danger of disappearing in the new few years if the current trends continue. In fact, Colorado has the fastest rate of increase in the number of children living in poverty in the United States.

So with that background, the organization has been visiting rural areas with a two fold purpose: make people aware of the problems of children that are generally associated with poverty and to find out why rural areas buck the trends of poverty as a determinant. In particular, rural areas tend have the same or higher percentages of children living at or under the poverty level, but don’t have the negative outcomes associated in other areas with poverty. I.e., the kids may be poor, but they are doing well on standardized tests, graduating high school at high rates, not exhibiting the crime and violence issues found in other areas, etc. Early prenatal care and other measures of poverty buck the trends out here in the northeastern plains as well – some counties here having 100% early prenatal care of poverty level mothers as opposed to the 20-30% in urban areas.
The reason this is interesting to the Colorado Children’s Campaign is that they hope to find out what is different in areas where poverty is not the detriment it is in other areas. I.e. to find out what progams can be effective in battling the curse of poverty. This is a very real recognition on the organizations part that they are not going to be able to eliminate poverty any time soon, so what can they and we do so that it hurts the future the least. Other states have tackled the poverty issue in various ways, but the question is what will work here. The program is just beginning to do the research, but I am encouraged by the fact they are looking for the other factors. They have already done an appreciable amount of work in showing the poverty problem is not due to issues like immigration and migration, etc. It is encouraging to see a social issue organization that is non-partisan and pursuses real research into the best measures to ameliorate the problem. I only wish there were more like them.