|
|
|
Today I return to one of the subjects that I’ve excavated for material
before, and which isn’t likely to run out soon. This is the counties of America,
all 3,351 of them, which no one else cares about, so I have the field all to
myself. That’s fine, unless someone thinks that I ought to visit them before
writing about them. Maybe some people think I did it already. I don’t see the
necessity. I’m just doing thumbnail sketches, not in-depth articles. Jayson
Blair was the master of this . While on reporting assignments around the
country he "e-mailed the national editor about his progress…from another floor in
the building". So it says in the December ‘Vanity Fair’. If that technique
is good enough for the New York Times, it’s good enough for me.
I’ve been saying in this space that it’s hard to find any material on the
subject of county government in the library, but I overlooked my own little
collection at home. In a book called the Concise Dictionary of American History,
origin unknown, I find an article on "County Government", taking up almost a
full page. It’s not too complimentary. It refers to the county system as the
Dark Continent of American politics and says there are too many of them, so
that they‘re often too small to serve the needs of their inhabitants. Even so,
it goes on to say, only three states in the country don’t have county
government. One of them is Connecticut, which causes me to look up Farfield county,
finding that in fact it does not have a county government. The towns do
everything. The citizens don’t care. Their median income is $77,690, so they don’
t give a rap who runs the government as long as they’re left alone.
Still it’s a funny business, having counties but giving them nothing to do.
It’s mostly confined to New England, where only the courts are based on the
counties and the rest of the government is carried on by the towns, including
Salem, famous for witches, Fall River, famous for Lizzie Borden, the ax
murderess, and Peyton Place, famous for everything else.
In writing about the system as it exists in this country I’ve dwelt a little
upon the patronage involved, meaning the number of jobs that usually get
filled in any county government. I stopped with the county courts, however,
because that’s the common denominator of all counties. Just about all of them have
a county court, no matter how insignificant they are. That means jobs for a
judge and his satellites, which I’ve talked about before, but the Dictionary
reminds us that there is a "long list" of other functionaries as well, such as
the coroner, clerk, prothonotary (?), register of wills, register of deeds,
sheriff, assessor, treasurer, etc. etc. The Dictionary doesn’t seem to consider
this a roll of honor by any means.
It may seem unbelievable that a county of 8,000 people in Kentucky could have
all these people on the payroll just in order to uphold their dignity as a
bygod free and independent county entitled to its own courthouse and its own
flag and the respect of the rest of the state, but it seems to be so. Some fast
research I’ve done shows that there are approximately the same number of
county courts in this country as there are counties, 3,351 There has only been a
small amount of consolidation, so the small counties with the big courthouses
continue to be part of the system, though where they find business for their
courts is a mystery to me. I’ll keep working on it, though, since no one else
shows any interest, meaning I don’t have to worry about being scooped. I may
have to worry about being read, though.
Still, there are possibilities. A young reporter with itchy feet who wanted
to travel the country might come up with a major expose` visiting some of our
more remote courthouses. For instance it wouldn’t be surprising to read a
story like this:
Hairbrush, Ohio, February 16h. As part of the Snitch’s ongoing investigation
of conditions in the rural counties of Ohio your reporter today paid a visit
to the county courthouse in the center of the town of Hairbrush, which is the
county seat of Pinaud County. I wanted to see how this county of less than
10,000 people manages to employ a judge, a sheriff, a bailiff, a clerk and a
dozen other officers of the court at a cost of more than $500,000 a year I got
to the courthouse about three o‘clock in the afternoon. No one questioned me
when I walked in the door. Actually the place seemed to be deserted. I
looked into a courtroom on the first floor and it was empty. I was almost
beginning to feel lonely until from down the hall I heard the sound of music coming
from the direction of one of the offices. The door was ajar and a party seemed
to be in progress inside. One of the celebrants spotted me and the invited me
to join the "gang" as he called them. I observed a number of open liquor
bottles on the desks, along with ice buckets and snack trays. In the corner a
group was harmonising an old song which I identified as "Rag Mop" although the
voices were slurred. My host pointed out one of the singers to me and said
"Thass the judge. He can’t sing for beans".
Just then a woman came in and announced "Listen, we hear there’s reporter
snooping around here looking’ to write a story about this place" whereupon my new
friend said to me "Nuts! Just when things were starting to hot up. We’ll
have to break it up. Hey folks" , he said, turning to the crowd, "Court is
adjourned for the day. We will reconvene at Pete’s place around the corner in
fifteen minutes. All rise".
Clearly this is going to be an interesting assignment. I regret missing out
on the doings at Pete’s, but I had trouble finding it and finally decided it
might be better not to go.
Naughty Pine, Las Mujeres County, New Mexico. February 28th. My experience
here was almost a repetition of what I found in Ohio, except everything had a
Spanish accent, as you might surmise from the name of the town, which was
originally ‘Knotty’ Pine. The courtroom was just as deserted, the party was just
as raucous, but featured mariachi music and tequila instead of bourbon and
rock, and the judge couldn’t sing any better than the one in Ohio. This one wasn
’t broken up by scaremongers, but went on for a considerable length of time,
as I seem to remember. Ay,ay,ay.
This is the kind of dispatch I picture as emanating from a tour of America’s
one-horse courthouses In my bones I know this is the way things must be. I
worked in some offices of that kind myself, although they weren’t courthouses.
They were fun, though. The question is, do we have 3,300 funhouses in
America, or do we have 3,300 courthouses we can’t get along without? If we do, then
I apologize in advance for my little fantasy about what goes on there. If we
don’t, you can call me a prophet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
