Taking leave of their census

Kimberley McGee

Tuesday, June 6, 2000 | 9:25 a.m.

Have you ever wondered what lies beyond your neighbor's door?

Well, more than 2,000 U.S. Census enumerators found out as they knocked on tens of thousands of doors in the Las Vegas valley since April. There are less than 15 percent of area homes still to be polled as part of the census and the count is expected to be wrapped up completely in the next few weeks.

Each morning and at the end of the day, teams of about a half-dozen enumerators and their team leaders gathered at libraries, fast food restaurants and other venues to cool off and swap stories of their adventures in the streets of Las Vegas.

Gathering information for federal funding for the state, these tally-takers have been welcomed into homes for cool drinks by cooperative residents. They've also been threatened with guns, dogs or bodily injury from not-so-cooperative, anti-government-slogan-spewing brutes.

Then again, it's all in a day's work, said Barbara Cogar, a team leader.

"(Enumerators) go up to a door and they don't know what's behind it," she said. "They don't know what kind of situation they are going into. They should be applauded for their hard work."

The stories they tell are titillating, funny and sometimes sad. Most of all they give a snapshot of what lies behind the doors of many Las Vegas homes.

Buff be a lady

It's the stuff of legend and, perhaps, fantasy: The salesman shows up at a door greeted by a scantily-clad woman. It happened recently to a shocked local census worker, according to Vern Born, a team leader.

"A woman answered the door in just her panties," Born said, repeating what he had heard from another enumerator in the first weeks of the counting process.

The enumerator showed her his official ID. The woman then told him to wait a minute and left him at the door. It gave her the time she needed, he thought, to put on something more socially acceptable.

"She came right back wearing nothing," Born said. "Then she said, 'Why don't you come in?' and he said, 'I'm not allowed to.' And she said, 'That's the only way you are going to get it.' And he said, 'Get what?' And she said, 'Whatever it is you are after.' So he enumerated her."

The woman was a nude dancer, a proud nude dancer, who thought she should reveal her occupation up front and in the flesh, Born said.

Although nudity was common, it certainly stuck out among the stories that enumerators swapped.

"One guy had a dog on the leash and (answered) the front door buck naked," Born said.

No information was available on whether or not the gentleman was asked to fill out the long, or the, um, short, form.

Other residents were more than happy to oblige the enumerators.

"This drop-dead gorgeous 19-year-old with long, blond hair answers the door," to the knock of a quiet, retired enumerator, Born said. "He's taken aback because she said in the most alluring voice that she had been expecting him."

She offered iced tea and they sat at the dining room table to fill out the form. One of the first questions he asked regarded nationality and he made a comment about her light hair.

"She said, 'I'm not really a blond and I can prove it,' " Born said. "At that point he just about had a heart attack. He had to finish up as quickly as he could because he said he was speechless that she would be interested in an old man like him."

For the most part, Las Vegans were amiable, cooperative and understood the role of the census in creating a better Nevada, Born said.

Unique to Las Vegas

On the average, three or four visits at different times of the day are sufficient to catch someone at home, said Allan Ginsberg who has been involved with the census in other cities since 1970.

"Something unusual about Vegas is that we have to make a lot more visits than normal," he said. "Here, it's not uncommon to make six, seven, eight visits and still not catch anybody@home."

There are a number of residents who live elsewhere during the year as well as those who work in other states. Government officials estimate Nevada residents missed out on $200 million dollars in federal funds due to the undercount in 1990.

"Someone is there for two weeks in a row and then disappears for four or five weeks (and) no one thinks it's unusual," Ginsberg said.

Another unique aspect of the Entertainment Capitol of the World's makeup is the large amount of famous and infamous people who live in the tony suburbs. A simple street number is the only bit of information enumerators have when they knock on a door. Who lives on the other side of that door is sometimes a surprise.

"There's a fair amount of well-known people in this town," Ginsberg said. "They open the door and you say, 'I know that face, I've seen it in a newspaper.' For the most part, most of them are very, very hospitable, and they are well read so they are receptive to what we are doing."

You want to know what?

Then there are those who don't want anything to do with the census.

"I felt like a bounty hunter," enumerator Ed Taylor said. He had to track a person down, on average, five to six times before he obtained any pertinent information.

The aid of co-workers and computer files helped Taylor verify information on a local businessman who was constantly on the go.

And sometimes couples argued over the importance of the census -- and not always in English.

"This one guy spoke English as a second language, and I don't think his wife spoke English," Taylor said. "She was in the kitchen yakking and didn't want me there at all."

Taylor struggled to understand the man through his accent and the woman's background bantering. Finally the man had enough and closed the door on Taylor.

"I felt like I was part of a Three Stooges movie and I was the No. 1 stooge." Taylor said. "We only got up to question 15 when he ended it."

Bob Anderson didn't get that far when he knocked on the door of a 91-year-old resident who refused to give him any personal information, other than her age.

"She didn't even want to tell me that and I finally got it out of her," Anderson said. "I'm about ready to say thanks when I ask if she knows when her neighbors will be home."

For the next 20 minutes she regaled Anderson with the highlights of her neighbors' lives: their children, where they worked and what she thought of their lifestyle.

"I filled out three questionnaires about her neighbors but she wouldn't tell me anything about herself," he said.

Go get 'em

By car, four-wheel drive truck, airplane and even horse, enumerators around the country are counting residents of all the backwoods areas. This includes Nevada, which has a large number of ranches nestled deep in the desert.

Team leader (and city dweller) Louis Lampley ventured into the valley's outlying areas with little trepidation -- until he was taught a lesson in etiquette.

On his first day out along with three other enumerators, Lampley was assigned the sparsely populated Mount Charleston area.

They approached their first ranch, stopped the car, bypassed the locked gate and walked toward the house, at which point the homeowner approached with two large, wolf-like dogs.

Lampley recalled: "We stopped -- everybody stopped -- and (the man) said, 'Let me share with you what you are supposed to do when you come to this area of Nevada.' "

His instructions: Drive through the open gate, honk the horn and when someone comes out of the house the car may be exited. If evacuation occurs before that the dogs may be turned loose. If the gate is closed, do not come in under any circumstances.

"We thanked him very much and we left," Lampley said. "That was my introduction to the census in this area and that was pretty informative."

Although Lampley received flack, Jason Landers' experience was more about the lack of information he found on the outskirts of Blue Diamond, 10 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

"The address said one thing, but things had changed," Landers said. "It will say it was a pink house and it was now totally different 10 years later."

At one location, only pieces remained in discarded piles of what was dutifully counted as a family residence in the 1990 census.

"There was an impression of where their mobile home was, but their furniture and beds were sitting outside," Landers said.

One of the more difficult areas of Nevada to count, said team leader Richard Luesing, is Sandy Valley, 60 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Enumerators flew in to the valley last week and traversed the only paved road through the area.

"Most (homes) don't have addresses -- it's just the blue-and-white house behind the oak tree," Luesing said.

The rustic neighbors, who live miles apart with spotty phone service, somehow know the enumerators are coming before they knock on their doors.

"I don't know how they do it ... It's impressive," Luesing said.

Down and out

Then there are those who adamantly refuse to fill out the form, Luesing said, and the reasoning can teeter on the edge of morbid.

"One guy said, 'I don't want to be counted because I'm going to kill myself anyway,' " Luesing said.

The story that lies behind some doors is bleak, at best.

Ed Taylor noticed the door was ajar before he knocked on a resident's front door of an apartment recently. When no one answered he walked away, noting the opened door on his census form. Taylor checked back later to find drab furnishings revealed through the crack in the door. Worried, he reported the incident to the apartment manager, and received some upsetting information.

"The guy is suicidal. Metro (police) kicked his door in and they won't let him have a lock on his door," Taylor said.

That dark side of fishing for information door-to-door counts for a small percentage of the data diggers' experiences, Born said. Most of the enumerators found the long walks through myriad neighborhoods quite revealing.

"You do get to see a lot of beautiful homes," Born commented.

Enumerator Cathy Hill agreed, offering her own insight into Las Vegas' citizens.

"I walked up to this house -- it was a mansion, really -- and the couple invited me in," she said.

The middle-aged pair had not worked in five years, although the husband admitted he liked to play cards. Their son was not at home at the time to help fill out the form. He was at work -- bussing tables.

"(The man) waived his hands around and said, 'Somebody has to pay for all this,' " Hill said.

Which is what the census is all about.

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