I was looking into propinquity tonight after finishing up with making preparations for onward movement and integration. The old myth was that 90% of Americans didn't move more than 50 miles from where they were born. It appears to be as mythical as dragons. Still, I'm pretty sure we don't really want to run into them. I tell my other half, mostly in jest, if we hear banjo music we turn around and run.
There's other bits of interest in the census quick facts. I will skip over all the bits that hew to race, color and class and focus on those like me and mine and most all of you. Veterans amounted to 22 million Americans. All of them have families. Is that a voting block? No, and it never will be. I think that every other Republic had that problem but not US. We're an ornery bunch.
4 comments:
I tell my other half, mostly in jest, if we hear banjo music we turn around and run.
Heh. I used that line... sorta... when I was explaining to the kids the "charms" of the parts of rural Kentucky I drove through recently, as in more junk cars and single-wides than I've ever seen in my life. And some very hard looking people of both genders. Luckily I had a full tank o' gas and had no need to stop in the worst places. But I DID have banjo music playin' in my head.
Yep. Deliverance has a lot to answer for.
"Propinquity"---Shades of Zelda Gillroy and Dobie Gillis!
PS: IIRC as late as 1944 >60% of all Americans lived within walking distance of work. One can see this past pattern graphically if one goes up Tulane Ave in New Orleans from the CBD to the old Dixie and Falstaff brewery's and drive the streets of all the surrounding then brewery workers shotgun houses that comprise the now slowly decaying neighborhood--but the bars are still there, lol.
I see it a lot in the old industrial cities of the east. It didn't ever exist in California. :)
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