Seventy Years and Counting...

I can't stand it any longer, in only three more days the 1940 United States Census will be released. Oh the anticipation! I want to delve into it greedily. I have visions of massive brick walls tumbling, those bricks soon piling up. I shall build a monument with them - inscribe it with just those four numbers: 1940. Or maybe in Roman Numerals: MCMXL!!  (How cool is that?)

And the first layer of bricks - please God - will disclose where, and with whom, my grandmother Lutie A. Foote had secreted herself at the time of that census! 

But, no index... No Index!?! Joshua put away your trumpet - most likely, for me at least, the walls won't come trumblin' down that fast! It won't happen at 2 AM on April 3rd, 2012, whilst I sit here at my computer, with only little Oreo the cat, to observe my Genealogy Happy Dance. I doubt that many of us will be dancing that quickly, not without an index. Are we spoiled, or what? We shall have to dust off our long unused skills, we shall have to search that census, state by state, county by county, city by city, and township by township. But we will do it - and we'll find time to assist in the indexing, too. We are, after all, Super Genies! We know our stuff. Oh fear not, names will be coaxed from those 70 year old pages. Marriages, births, deaths - the closets will spill forth with the skeletons!! 

You can help speed up that index, ya' know. You didn't know? Well for Pete's sake (does anybody really know 'Pete Who'?) Go here:  https://the1940census.com/

OK, I'll calm down now... But wait!! God help me, I am also a political junkie - and I will be needing this blog to: comment on the candidates, harangue anyone brave enough to take issue with my opines on the issues, postulate on who, what, where, and why I, and those who agree with me, have all the answers, to all the questions (whatever they be.) And just generally spend the period up to the first Tuesday of November, 2012 opening my mouth and inserting my Foote!

Hold on there... I hear you crying foul! Nay, I never said that I would write only on the subject of Family History and Genealogy. True, those are my favorite subjects, but, dear reader, I refer you to my original entry on this blog; 17 March 2011, paragraph number three, sentence number three, where I very clearly state, "...it's my computer and I'll write anything that I want to!" 

And for today I want to write about the 1940 Census. I want to read the 1940 Census! 

Seventy years! Will it always be that long, even now when all the world is within a 'tap' of our fingers? I protest, because I surely will not be here for the 1950 Census - which means I will not know the pleasure of seeing my own name listed in a census before the quests are done with, and I am gleefully communicating, one to one, with the real dudes and dudettes! Laughing and slapping my knee, declaring; "...that's a good one! no wonder I never found her, tee-hee." 

Only 3 days... at what point should we start counting hours, I wonder? With this new (old) census I hope to turn over a new leaf - I will attempt to maintain consistency of installments on this blog. I will muse about my own family history and genealogy of course, I shall wax poetic on politics, yes - and with my fellow 'keepers' I will await, and record the revelations of the 1940 Census, those miraculous episodes of serendipity that require a chorus of... Hallelujah!

Here's a terrific infographic from Archives.com for you to use as you begin to 'take it all in' with the 1940 Census...