I worked on the 1990 census from summer 88 through fall 1990. It was terrific for me. We were remapping everything and verifying addresses, etc. I had been working catch as catch can and this job got me caught up on everything. I worked very fast compared to the college students and retirees who were most of the rest and I did it on a 55 mpg motorcycle while getting the same mileage money as the old guy in the Cadillac. Come the count itself, again I worked far faster than the others and when bonuses started being offered because it was dragging so badly I got the max bonuses possible. I could do a hundred addresses in the time that it took Joe College to do 6. Finally I was put in the ghetto sections of Tallahassee and Fort Walton to clean up the areas that everyone else was afraid to enter and then I was put up in a hotel for a week to work the phones to prod offices all over the state to get their asses in gear and to confirm items that had questions. I was sorry to see it all end. When it did I went fishing (commercial, that is.)
My wife is currently out of work, so I’m going to recommend she check with the census folks about job availability in our area.
I lived in Dallas at the time—the 1970s, and they sent me all over the southwest.
The people were fine everywhere, but in rural areas of Louisiana and Arkansas the roads were terrible—muddy in some places—very rickety bridges in others.
Some of the black rural people told me I was the first white person they had ever seen! (The little kids surrounded me and stared like I was a visiting alien.)