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Last February I wrote a piece about the proliferation of counties in this
country, to the point where Georgia, with a third of the population of New York,
had 159 counties to New York's 62, with no reasonable explanation to offer,
leading people like myself to suspect that there was money in the game
somewhere. No one, however, has offered to start an investigation of this, so I've
decided to stop complaining and start taking a closer look at these organisms so
that I can get some idea of the strange fascination they exert over the
public, bringing about their continued existence in defiance of common sense.
I started with a little memory exercise, recollecting as best I could which
of the 3,351 total counties in the country had made enough impression on my
mind for me to be able to list them for further examination. The first one was
good old Harlan County of Kentucky. Then there was Cook County in Illinois,
Marin and Calaveras Counties in California, Bucks County, Fairfield County, Clay
County, Missouri, Johnson County, somewhere, Deaf Smith County, Texas, and
that was enough. They were rich and poor, north and south, east and west, but
they all had one thing in common. Their names had somehow gotten lodged in my
mind.
Harlan was the most notorious. It is deep in the Cumberland Mountains, where
only one activity is available by which to make a living. That is coal
mining -- nothing else pays, even though farming goes on. So does moonshining
and squirrel hunting. Even though the population to this day only goes to
40,000 or so, the place has kicked up a lot of dust in its time. Coal and guns and
corn liquor made a pretty volatile mixture, especially with the miners facing
death daily in the tunnels, getting only enough by it to run a tab at the
company store, the only one available to them in their isolation. The miners
hated the mineowners, the owners hated the miners, they were all sharpshooters,
and the fight was on. Harlan County became known as a war zone right into the
middle of the Twentieth Century. That’s why it was the first name that came
into my mind when I made my survey. All hail to Harlan, the shootin’est county
in the U.S. of A!
Chicago is also a place with a violent reputation, but that’s not why the
name of Cook County, its home, came to me right behind Harlan’s. It’s just that
the appearance of the name so many times in news reports has made it probably
the best known county in America and a natural choice for the honor roll. As
for history, well give a listen:
1683 First European settlement.
1812 Chicago (Fort Dearborn) destroyed.
1816 Fort Dearborn rebuilt.
1871 Great Fire of Chicago.
1886 Haymarket riots in Chicago.
1894 Pullman strike, Chicago.
1903 Iroquois Theater fire.
1919 Black Sox throw World Series.
1919 Prohibition era begins. Gang wars in Chicago.
1933 Prohibition ends. Gang wars continue.
1942 First nuclear reaction achieved, Chicago.
1968 Democratic convention riots, Chicago.
That’s the history of Cook County. A dark and bloody tale, if ever there was
one.
By contrast to Cook County, where people who are not already depressed by the
historical background still find themselves victims of the famous weather,
featuring freezing winds sweeping in from Lake Michigan in the winter and
hyperthermic heat in the summer, the California counties on our list are tropical
paradises. Calaveras County has been known to me since I was a schoolboy being
introduced to Mark Twain’s books. We were informed that Mark first came into
public notice in 1867with his story of the celebrated jumping frog of
Calaveras County. That’s what we were told, but I still don’t believe it. How an
innocuous item like that could have caused a sensation and made its author
famous is beyond me. I haven’t seen any explanations, so I’m left with my own.
Apparently people were so unused to seeing western dialect in print that they
were bowled over by it and never got over it. Unlike future generations they
hadn’t been raised on a diet of cowboy movies and were overcome by the novelty.
All I can say is that it was a good thing for Mark Twain that he went on to
write other things.
Calaveras County is tucked away in mining country east of San Francisco in
the Mokelumne River watershed. The mining there was for gold and Calaveras was
at the center of the Gold Rush. The most famous citizen was a man known as
Black Bart, who specialized in robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches, but never
taking anything from the passengers or drivers. He was eventually arrested and
tried, but not hanged. One thing about my counties, they usually seem to have a
background of violence not too far in their past. We’ve already looked at
Harlan and Cook. There are more to come.
Calaveras seems like a good vacation spot these days and advertises itself as
such. There are lots of old mining camps for sightseeing, but I’m afraid the
excitement of the Black Bart and Jumping Frog days is gone. That’s the
difference from Harlan and Cook. You can still find trouble in those places.
There’s only space for one more entry in this travelogue. Marin County, so
far as I know, has nothing in common with the others covered here, but it is
famous, so it made the list and here it is. Its claim to fame is that it’s
rich, but crazy. It’s the home of hippies, junkies, nudists, pacifists,
transvestites, vegetarians, vegans, potheads, anarchists, terrorists, naturists,
animists, Buddhists, star-gazers, fire worshippers, Zen masters, time travelers,
tree huggers and others too luminous to mention. A quick trip across the Golden
Gate Bridge and you’re in Wonderland. One way to describe it is to list a
few of the thousands of organizations that serve the diverse interests of its
citizens. They run the gamut, as you will see:
Attitudinal Healing
Barefoot and Pregnant in the Bay Area.
Beyond Hunger
D.O.G.B.O.N..E.
Depressive and Manic Depressive Association
For Whom the Bridge Tolls
Hypnotherapy (13 listings)
International Association for Sufism
Tibetan Center for Compassion and Wisdom
What is Sufism?
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