The results are in…

Because we’re a newspaper, we feel obliged to take a poll at least once a year to ask residents a local, state and national question, such as – What’s the best treasure you ever brought home from the town dump? Your favorite restaurant in Connecticut? How are you informed of national news? The responses to this year’s poll:

Local Poll: Do you still have an outhouse on your property?

A surprising 30% of the 53 property owners who participated still have outhouses, though none in use, including two – and even three – holers!

State Poll: What’s your favorite season in Connecticut?

Of the 66 participants, 42% selected summer, 30% voted for fall, especially inviting on one of the mildest afternoons of the year, 16% chose spring, particularly older people who said it has come to mean for them that winter is over, and 12% named winter, mostly children looking forward to snow – specifically snow men, snow sledding and snow days.

National (ity) Poll: What is your heritage?

We’re a wonderful mixture of cultures with 36% claiming Irish descent, 34% English, and 30% German. Two percent of townsfolk have Italian, Welsh or Scottish roots, 1% have Native American, French Canadian, Polish and Eastern European origins. Two participants listed Swedish, Portuguese, Dutch or Mexican ancestry, and there was one person whose lineage included Hungarian, Austrian, Swiss, Czech or Russian.

Seven people, or 1.8% of the participants, listed single heritages: Russian, German, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and French Canadian, while five people called themselves merely “Americans”, with one saying she was always told she was a “Swamp Yankee” and three others saying they were “Heinz 57”. Of these, two postscripts stated, “who knows, really?” and another explained, “We had a sailor in the family”.

The bottom line – we all come from someplace else, and we all belong.