Address Canvassing (Census)

While I was updating the census maps and address list, I had an opportunity to check out the long abandoned rail station, located (of course) next to the tracks on Railroad St. It was right on my route, and I wanted to make sure no one was camped out there, because if someone was, I'd have to make a map spot.



It has clearly gotten a lot of graffiti and glass-breakage over the years--I guess it's better that the kids go here to be destructive than somewhere else. I didn't find anyone camped out, or even any evidence of that--which maybe surprised me a little, considering that I've seen people sleeping under the counter at the laundromat--but it is awfully messy and dangerous in the rail-station, so it really isn't conducive to camping out.



My cell-phone pictures don't do the building justice, sadly, but I will return with black and white film to really get some nice contrasty images. Everything was very still, and the chickadees (or are they nuthatches?) were flitting from tree to building.



I had some nice cooperative people (such as at the senior housing), some neutral people, and some mean and/or scary people on my routes. I also saw a number of pit-bulls and Am Staffordshire Terriers, I think, which are the short-haired ones that maul people sometimes? I wondered what people are so worried about that they train their dogs to growl and lunge at a person arriving quite neutrally in broad daylight, and announcing themselves. I was forced to take map spots from further away in some cases because I thought if I approached the stairs, I would get bitten or worse.

There are an awful lot of paranoid people here in Milton, or maybe in the world. Very suspicious, even when I tell people who I am, show them an ID badge, hand them a sheet about the confidentiality of the census, and say that I'm only updating addresses. One not-too-bright individual told me, after I'd said this, "I don't want any!" Want any what? Are you listening to what I'm saying here? Good grief, don't answer the door if you're only going to be mean--I knocked lightly and I'll go away when I'm done updating my maps, if you don't answer, [jerk.] What's funny is that the people who are most likely to form a militia are living on such bucolic-sounding streets as "Lovely Ln." and "Aurora Ln." Sweet_enemy mentioned earlier that the Bureau of Ironic Names must've been through beforehand.

The job is intermittently worrisome, and mostly boring. But I will update if I find any other interesting abandoned places.