Janesville by the numbers

Last week I filled out a census form for the first time. It took about seven minutes. The only confusing part was trying to figure out why so many people could get so worked up about such a simple exercise. Or, perhaps I'm simply naive and don't see the hidden evils behind the data the Census Bureau collects.

In 2000 I lived in an apartment above a family home, so I was probably only marked as another person living in the household. Now I'm the first name listed, an empowering, adult feeling. Now I truly feel like a citizen, and sort of patriotic. Television ads for the census have been everywhere during the NCAA tournament and it seems by now everyone should know that it's crucial everyone is counted so cities and neighborhoods can receive proper funding, among other things. The catchy songs and print ads explain the rest.

Here's the info on the 56048 zip code - which Janesville's a part of - from 2000.

The site city-data.com compiles countless bits of information on practically every city in the country. I could probably remove practically from that sentence, since any site that has reams of info on Kinbrae, Minnesota - home to approximately 21 people - must surely have every city covered. Some of the info comes from the census, but the site also lists crime stats and voting habits, information it gets from other sources.

The information is incredibly detailed. Here's Janesville's city data. In most ways it's a portrait of a typical small town, presented with raw numbers and pie graphs galore. Some of it's a little confusing. According to city-data, the towns of Elysian, St. Clair, Pemberton, Eagle Lake, Waterville and Waseca are all within 3.2 miles of Janesville, when nearly all of them are 10 or more miles away. With my math background, there's a chance I'm misinterpreting these figures, though it reads: NEAREST CITIES. Seems hard to misread that description.

I found it surprising that Janesville's tornado activity is above the state average and is 111 percent greater than the U.S. average. Growing up we certainly had a number of frightening warnings and nights spent in the basement, huddled under sturdy pool tables and shaky ping-pong tables. But they never seemed to get close to the town, thankfully, and Janesville's always escaped the devastating damage that countless neighboring towns have suffered.

Janesville skews red when it comes to politics, as Bush/Cheney won 56 percent of the vote in 2004. This information isn't surprising now that I'm an adult, but this would have blown me away as a kid growing up in a family where Republican was a four-letter word.

"Wait, someone likes Reagan?" Now I see we were probably actually a minority of the small town population. Feel like rebels.

In 2008, Janesville had 2,242 people, a 6 percent increase from the 2000 census. The town's growing but the school enrollment shrinks.

Janesville struggled with a crime spree in 2001, at least compared to every other year. There were three assaults, 11 burglaries and 55 thefts that year. There's only been one assault since, though that number seems as dubious as the old election results when Saddam was running for president and taking home 100 percent of the vote. I often assumed every crime committed inside Janesville was fueled by alcohol or inspired by a pursuit of it, but the burglaries and thefts seem like they'd take the type of planning that's foreign to the average drunk in the middle of a bender.

When it comes to religion, Janesville people love their churches, with 34 percent of the population identifying as Catholics, 31 percent Evangelical Lutheran and 20 percent Lutheran. (As a Catholic kid growing up, we'd call the Lutheran kids, including my cousin, "loony Lutherans," counter-punching taunts of fish eaters; as a kid, there's no time or place for comedic subtlety). Overall, 82 percent of people are affiliated with a religious congregation, compared to 50 percent of the overall population in the country. Again, as a kid I don't know if I even knew what the words atheist or agnostic meant, much less that there were people who called themselves those things.

I'd also like to apologize to any Faith Lutheran parishioners who attended services at the church next to our house between 1983 and 1993. The building's vacant now, though it might still bear the scars of my athletic pursuits. I spent hundreds of hours throwing rubbers balls and tennis balls off the side of the church as I practiced fielding grounders or pitching. Eventually I started hitting tennis balls off of it, as our yard was a perfect setting for my Wimbledon fantasies. Usually I did this when the church was empty. Usually. There were also times when I'd compete against my dad in H-O-R-S-E or 1-on-1 at the neighbor's basketball hoop, games that often ended with primal screams and an occasional curse. Again, my apologies to the church members, though in fairness, they were highly competitive games. Any property damage to the rear of the church is not listed on city-data.

The town has 2.5 people per household, the exact same average as the state of Minnesota. That's Janesville - a normal, average, typical small town.

Of course, that's just what the numbers say. It's not always normal and not always average. After all, what other town has a doll that haunts the town? (Note: The doll and the dead: girl/boy/woman/man it represents are not included in census information.

Small-town blues

Yesterday, a picture of Michael and Jeanette Tristani kept popping up on Yahoo! whenever I'd check my email. The couple looked happy enough, but they told a depressing tale. The story focused on the Tristani family's struggles adapting to life in Hazelton, North Dakota, a town that's about 300 people shy of being classified as a dot on the map.

Hazelton, which had 237 people in the 2000 Census, attracted outsiders to the town with offers of cash and land: free lots and $20,000 for homes, $50,000 for businesses. The Tristanis ventured north from Miami. Hazelton's about as far away from Miami as you can get, and I don't mean geographically. The family appreciated many things about their new life in a new town - low crime and taxes, great cost of living, kids liked school - but struggled with some other aspects of small-town life, including a perceived indifference or downright dislike of outsiders. If you weren't born there and raised there and your grandparents aren't buried in the Lutheran cemetery a mile outside of town, you aren't one of them and never will be. That type of attitude. Or, as Jeanette Tristani said in the story, "People prejudge you without getting to know you."

That's what the Tristanis say they experienced, along with exposure to the type of cold they'd only read about. Other small-town dramas that drive out longtime residents and newcomers include a lack of high-paying jobs and the eternal complaints of anyone over the age of 15 that there's "nothing to do in town." These gripes aren't new. Sinclair Lewis knew all about small-town life. People have expressed similar sentiments since the time people realized there was a world outside of their little village of 1,500 people.

Compared to Hazelton, Janesville is a metropolis, clocking in with about 2,000 people. We had it easier than many places, as the town's only 60 minutes from the Twin Cities and 15 minutes from a decent-sized city in Mankato. And, yes, I write only 60 minutes without quotation marks around only. It really is an easy trip compared to what many towns face.

There's a single stoplight, though it only flashes red now. Budget cuts eliminated green and yellow. But there's a bank and a post office. A Dairy Queen remains popular and a Subway sits near the edge of town. The town's population has remained fairly stable over the years, but there are other struggles. Enrollment is way down, as students open enroll to nearby schools, often to schools in towns that are even smaller than Janesville. The newspaper office closed. Other businesses have faltered. It's a story that's been told in countless small towns everywhere, including Hazelton.

Growing up, most people who moved to Janesville didn't come from outside the state. A family did move from war-torn Cambodia and struggled at times with the small-town mentality that can occasionally convert to outright hostility. They eventually moved to a larger city and one of my best childhood friends was gone for good. But then, that kind of mentality is not unique to towns with population below 3,000. It's just that in those towns it might be harder finding friendly faces.

For newcomers to any small towns, part of fitting in relates to where they've come from. Hostility is not the default setting for small towns. There will be welcoming arms, though it might take some work to find them. A person's experience makes a difference. When I wrote Keeping the Faith, I spent several months in Ellendale, North Dakota, a conservative, deeply religious small town that's 30 miles from the nearest McDonald's. After a few days I felt at home, owing mostly to the generosity and friendliness of people I had just recently met. I might have had an easier time settling in because I came from that environment. I had been living in New York City, but my roots were still in Janesville. Someone without that background might have taken longer to feel accepted, though the reception from the townsfolk would have been exactly the same.

Some of the small town cliches are true. The people are generally more conservative, though that can devolve into caricature as well. Small town liberals like hunting just as much as small town conservatives, and simply knowing how to shoot a deer doesn't make someone unique in those towns, no matter their gender or political aspirations.

Growing up, it does seem like everyone knows what you're doing. Think of a small-town gossip queen and the image of an overweight 55-year-old woman who sports binoculars that see nearly everything in town and has a mind that imagines the rest immediately springs to mind. She talks about the drinking problem of Mr. Johnson. She hints at infidelity in the Olson marriage. And did you hear about young Laura Smith? Seems she'll open her legs for any boy who asks. It's not quite that blatant. Rumors spread in checkout lines and church dinners. A father's reputation can become his son's reputation, no matter how different they might be. There's no place to hide, for better or worse.

Friday night entertainment often consisted of driving up and down Main Street for hours at a time, a never-ending cycle of U-turns, slow cruises and nods of the head to schoolmates making the exact same drive in other cars, a generation after their parents navigated the same short route. For people with kids, the value of small class sizes might not make up for the other lack of opportunities.

It's difficult to adapt to a life in a place where the pros and cons are both often about what's not there, whether it's noise and crime or high-paying jobs and cultural outlets. A lifetime New Yorker would have more trouble adapting to a town of 1,000 than a small town lifer would have adapting to the Big Apple. Obviously a lot of that has to do with what each person is giving up, but it also requires a different mentality.

So what are the other benefits? Space. Big yards for low prices. A tight community, even if some find it suffocating. But there are times when it's good that everyone knows everyone else's business, because townsfolk will help those in need in whatever way possible. A town rallies around a young mother stricken with cancer or a dad injured in a farming accident. It's impossible to get lost in the masses. You'll never be a statistic.

And for young people? I lived a block from a city park I called my own on many days. I lived a block from the library and grocery store. A block from school. All my friends were five minutes away.

When young people "leave" a small town, I think it usually has more to do with economic reasons than a desire to flee the lifestyle. It's not just about jobs in the towns themselves. The jobs have to surround them as well. Often, people live in a small town but commute to a larger city where factories and offices are located. Layoffs 30 miles away can fatally harm a small town. Many people in Janesville used to work at Brown Printing and the manufacturing plant E.F. Johnson, a pair of companies that at one time employed thousands but eliminated countless jobs the past 15 years.

It's difficult to create viable businesses in small towns. The Tristanis opened a bistro and coffee shop. They clashed with the owner of another coffee shop and eventually closed theirs. But should that necessarily be an indictment of small towns and their reluctance to welcome newcomers with open arms and empty stomachs? Thousands of restaurants, bars and shops fail every year, no matter the population. On our Manhattan block, bars and delis have come and gone, many forgotten shortly after they displayed the first dollar spent in the store. It had nothing to do with the neighborhood's hostility or the way they prejudge people and everything to do with economic difficulties that confront anyone gutsy enough to start those businesses. The Tristani family's entrepreneurship is admirable. But does Hazelton have enough people to support a coffee shop, much less two, no matter how cozy the setting and tasty the drinks? People aren't going to drive to Hazelton to visit the business, so it comes down to whether 200 people can keep a business alive that offers something many might see as a luxury, not a necessity.

Again, that seems to have little to do with small town people prejudging others or refusing to accept outsiders. And even in this story, those factors don't seem to have necessarily driven the family from North Dakota, as the main reason they moved back to Florida was to care for Jeanette's elderly parents.

As the Tristanis discovered, small-town life isn't for everyone. And all indicators seem to prove that it's for even fewer people than it was decades ago. I just don't think the struggles are all about a hesitance to welcome newcomers or accept change. There are close-minded people ins mall towns. Just as there are in big cities. The decline of small towns might simply be inevitable, another step in the evolution of economics and demographics. But for those who have been there their whole lives and for those who leave their old homes for a new one, small towns still have benefits that can appeal to everyone.

I love the big city life. I now preach its virtues to anyone who will listen, but I remain a small-town kid. That will never change, even if I’ll probably never again be a small town resident.

A tour of Janesville

I've previously written that the only tourist attraction in my hometown of Janesville is the famous Doll in the Window. And this is true.

But that doesn't mean it's the only thing to see in town. Oh, no. A lake. Softball fields. A Subway sandwich shop. Peace, quiet.

Thanks to the creepy ability of Google to view anything they want and to be everywhere in our lives, even when we don't want them to be, I've been taking a tour of the old town. I miss it. So come with me.

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This is on the Old Highway 14. For the longest time the highway ran right through town, ensuring lots of Dairy Queen customers and gawkers at the doll. Parents who told their kids to go play on the highway had to hope their unruly children didn't take them literally.

Janesville cops also like to hang out as drivers speed into the village, snaring them in their web and helping the town earn a reputation as a "speed trap." General rule: Any town of 3,000 people or less with at least one cop will have a reputation of being a speed trap. Fathers pass on warnings to their sons about "slowing down" as they approach these towns. And the reputation is usually richly deserved. The stereotype's true: small-town cops love pulling over speeders.

Now Highway 14 bypasses Janesville. But this what the view looks like if you've come from Mankato, which is the closest "big" city to Janesville. Townsfolk drive to Mankato for the mall, Applebee's and the movies.

The white silos with blue paint that spell out Janesville are a landmark themselves, but they used to be much cooler. The old design featured a rainbow. It ended with a pot of gold on the last structure.

For decades, Highway 14 had a reputation as being an extremely dangerous road. Way too many people died on that road over the years. Whenever we heard the sirens from our house, we always wondered if there had been a bad accident on Highway 14. A police car going after a speeder is one thing. But when an ambulance followed that siren, it signaled possible tragedy.

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Main Street. The Post Office sits on the end of the block to the right. Weirdly, I still remember the combination for my parents' post-office box. So if I ever need to steal any mail, I can hop on a plane, rent a car and get there before they make it uptown.

A few buildings up rests the former home of the Janesville Argus, which, like all newspapers, has seen better days. The weekly paper's offices moved to Waseca, 10 miles away. As a kid I got my picture in the paper a few times, one time when the editor found a turtle. He had me and my friend Mike pose with the lost creature. Slow news day.

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Wiste's grocery store. Best meat in southern Minnesota, and I'm not just saying that because I'm the East Coast lobbyist for the Janesville Chamber of Commerce. During the summers of 1984 and 1985, I went to Wiste's every day with my friend Brandon - we lived about a 30-second walk from the store - to buy baseball cards. I cringe when thinking about how much money we spent on cards those two years. "It's a Dave Engle card!" My parents probably cringe even more. Family friend Ron owned the store when I was a kid. In high school, I spent many hours above Wiste's, with my cousin Matt. Ron and his kids had put a weight room in that space. We lifted weights as best we could, jump-roped and competed in some of the most epic tapeball games never witnessed.

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Fury's Barbershop. Over the years, probably at least 10 people have emailed me to wonder if my dad owned Fury's Barbershop, or had memories of taking their kids to my dad's barbershop. They're very sweet letters. Except my dad didn't own it. That's Jim Fury, my dad's cousin, father to Matt. And I usually tell the writers that, unless I want to bask in some misdirected glory.

Jim - who's had the shop for more than 30 years since taking over from his late father, John - is probably the most famous Fury in the land. It owes partly to his reputation as a barber, but even more for his prominence as a comedian. A trip to the shop is only partially about getting a haircut. Mostly it's about listening to Jim's filthy jokes and stories, or his banter with barber shop supporting players who are as familiar to regulars as the cast of Cheers.

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Ah, the Dairy Queen. Two of the biggest mysteries in town each year are when will the DQ open and when will it close? If it breaks 50 degrees in March, people start getting excited. They can taste the Blizzards. They might wander out for a walk, supposedly for exercise. In reality, they'll stroll by to see if any worker waits like a bank teller in the DQ window. When a cold spell strikes in October, anxiety arrives. This time people worry that the Dairy Queen will shut down for the season.

The liquor store is next door. Blizzards and booze. Who could ask for anything more? If you're obese and an alcoholic, this is paradise.

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The city park. It's a great space. I spent hundreds of hours on the basketball court, which isn't visible here but is at the back. The only problem came with a rim that was slightly higher than 10 feet, so it had the potential to throw off your shot. Also, concrete jutted out at the bottom of the hoop, causing many a basketball to strike many an unsuspecting groin. It was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

An open space to the right served as the baseball field. We could round up 14, 15 kids on a summer day for a ballgame. The legends of the park had the ability to hit a home run onto the highway. We played football in the space to the left. Again, we had no trouble calling a dozen kids to meet at the park for an afternoon of football. See that big tree to the left? During one game a player slammed his head into it while diving for a catch (he dropped it). Brandon - who was on the other team - cracked, "Way to use your head, Derek." Seemingly harmless. But the line nearly started a brawl between the two teams.

Straight ahead, just to the right of the flag, is the vault the town will open to reveal the secret to the Doll in the Window. Spoooooky.

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The town's gas station. This used to be a Cenex. When I was in ninth grade, the Cenex began stocking bizarre videos that seemingly had no place in innocent, small-town Janesville, nestled in south-central Minnesota. Not porn. But strange, creepy thrillers and horror movies that had never seen the inside of a theater. Yet somehow they'd ended up on videotape in Janesville. I went down there every week with Matt to check out the latest offerings.

How weird were they? How about Night of the Bloody Apes.

Its description:
The plot concerns a mad scientist who transplants a gorilla's heart into his dying son, saving his life but transforming him into a monstrous, ape-like creature who embarks on a rape and murder spree before being brought to justice by a luchadora (female wrestler). The plot of Night of the Bloody Apes does not concern the luchadora bringing the ape-man to justice-rather, she has a much less pronounced role.

If I remember correctly, the justice actually involved the doctor trying to replace the gorilla heart in his son with the woman wrestler's heart. (sorry for the spoiler)

Now imagine two 15-year-olds scanning videos. Christmas Vacation? A classic, but seen it. The Hunt for Red October? It'll be on HBO. An ape-like creature embarking on a killing spree, brought to justice by a luchadora? The choice was easy. Sadly, the bizarre videos began disappearing after a few years, and we were never sure why. Then again, we were never sure why they were ever there, so everything evened out. And life returned to normal in Janesville.

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That's the Catholic Church to the right. A magnificent structure, inside and out. Saw the inside of it pretty much every Sunday as a kid. We lived a block away, rendering useless any excuse I had when trying to escape services. A snowstorm could have dumped 18 inches of snow on the town, keeping the priest and Jesus from getting to the church, but the Fury clan would have been there in one of the first few pews. Always in the front.

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Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton High School. This was sort of the view we had in 11th grade when someone called in a bomb threat and we all evacuated for a brief time (pre-Columbine, bomb threats were taken about as seriously as a spitball in science class).

And that brings us to the end of this tour. According to Google Street View that's about all there is to see in Janesville, as it didn't venture much off of Highway 14, except to take a stroll down Main Street.

That's all right. There isn't a whole lot more to see - a few churches, the library, some bars where good fights happen at times, including ones involving people named Chicken Man. And most people probably see these views and think, "That's it?"

But growing up, what was there was plenty, even if a virtual tour makes it look like not much at all.