Addressing Allegany County

Today, I spent much of the day working on the Allegany County portion of the database I maintain for work. A lot of hours studying addresses and C structs, USPS Mail Encoders and Google Streetview to trying untie complicated rural addresses, looking at rundown houses and farms. It’s been a long time — too long of a time — since I’ve been out to back-roads Allegany County in my now creaky ol’ jacked up pickup truck in those towns that smell like silage and cow shit.

There are some neat lands and houses down that way. They say they’re poor people but have you ever looked at the costs of raising livestock and homesteading? Equipment ain’t cheap neither is parts and fuel to keep that equipment humming along, feed and vet bills. Those big pickup trucks are not cheap these days nor the fuel bills for trips into town or work. As it’s the rural addresses that tend to break in large blocks in our database, it’s what I end up studying the most for programmatic fixes plus I find the most interesting places to study. Better than the Hampton and those endless Queens addresses that have been breaking since the days of the old Data General system.

Plus how can one be actually poor and live in the deep rural, homesteading, hunting and fishing? Eating fresh vegetables grown locally. I know I’m probably viewing such communities from the lens of the noble savage, romanticizing the cow shit, the broken families, the alcohol and drug abuse as people struggle to appease their creditors risking losing their land and ways of getting around while the law keeps garnishing more of their hard earned cash toiling in the mud, grease, cold and the smoke.  I’m reminded by colleague who said they counted the days left in winter on the family dairy by the loads of shit they hauled and spread for the season.

I’ve been told these aren’t good people. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but don’t you know they’re all Republicans, Trump Lovers and Bible Fanatics. Uneducated, poor people. But I don’t know, most of people I’ve met are actually pretty sensible, down to earth people who work and understand the land far better then I would ever. It’s such beautiful country, and it’s real – with broken down farm machinery and vehicles – piles of mud and manure, guns and livestock. I think many of those rural people know a lot more about how the real world does then a lot of scientists and politicians.

For now, though it’s a day dream. Just something to look at through Google Streetview as I fix another record, write an SQL command and take notes to pass along to the programming staff. Eventually I want to live deep rural, but not in New York with the high taxes, gun laws and burn ban. It’s tempting to look just south of border in Pennsylvania, and many things they do better there, but it’s also a fairly blue state and they’re not that far from being another New York after a few changes in power.

A picture below from an autumn trip in rural Cattaraugus County about a decade ago!