Talk Back: If you seek a smart city, keep looking

Trumpet players scare the bejeebers out of us. Al Hirt wasn’t so bad, but as little tykes, those eardrum-piercing notes at the beginning of Bert Kaempfert’s “Wonderland by Night” and the growling wah-wahs in the mid-section always sent us diving under the covers. And don’t even get us going on “Dragnet.” Talk about insipid.

That show made as much sense as three guys heading out to sea in a leaky dinghy with a little rod and reel to snag a great white shark.

Solving crimes is serious business. So who in their right mind would believe some dude who makes his living plunging wire baskets full of potato strips into vats of boiling hot oil — why else would he call himself “Fry Day” for crying out loud — is also a crackerjack detective? Clearly the producers weren’t buying it, which explains how they hit upon that ominous, four-note brass and timpani opening everyone knows by heart.

Dum de DUM dum.

Turns out Dragnet isn’t the only thing not bright enough to get into the Mensa Society. The same goes for a host of Michigan communities — and by extrapolation, the people who live there. There’s no good way to sugarcoat it. Unlike those at Lake Wobegon, they’re not all above average.

Even since David Letterman invented Top Ten lists, we’ve found such compendiums impossible to resist. So when we chanced across one about Michigan’s dumbest places — Ecorse, River Rouge, and the like — we just had to find out which others had made the cut. At first blush, the results weren’t particularly eye-opening. Until we dug a little deeper. And lest you think otherwise, what you are about to read is true. Nothing has been changed to protect the record. Or the CD.

Or the .mp3 file.

We were scrolling along — past Highland Park, Hamtramck, Greenville — when bam! No. 29 jumped right out at us. We did a double-take, but there it was. Nestled right between Romulus and Jackson. Dumber than Mount Clemens, Niles, and Menominee (dee-DEE ... dee-dee-dee). And definitely dumber than the proverbial Boxarox. Care to guess which town? Paging Rocky Balboa.

Yo, Adrian.

Yes, as if rancid-tasting water and the ongoing battle over car shows aren’t enough, there’s now proof positive why the Maple City ranks so low on the IQ scale. That’s according to Nick Johnson, whose lists of the best, worst, smartest, dumbest, cheapest and most expensive places to live have turned him into a real estate guru with a gazillion followers. And may also explain why Michigan’s population isn’t growing by leaps and bounds.

It’s strictly middle of the pack on the dumb states ranking.

Johnson’s city-by-city analysis relies on something he calls “Saturday Night Science” — a data-backed formula that compares the percentage of a community’s population with a less than high school education to the percentage of those with a college degree. Which in Adrian’s case reveals that 15 percent of adults 25 and older are high school drop-outs, while only 19 percent are highly-educated. Nothing to write home about. Particularly when another small town nearby — where only 7 percent are drop-outs and 24 percent are college grads — is doing a superior dance over its No. 70 ranking while posting a new sign at the city limits.

“Welcome to Hillsdale — 2.5 time smarter than Adrian.”

You see, community building — like real estate — is all about location and marketing. So why should the Maple City end its car show war or make water drinkable again when a new sign will do the trick instead?

“Adrian: At least we’re not Ecorse.”

Just the facts, ma’am.

Just the facts.

— Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time at localbuzzradio.com, Facebook Live and dougspade.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Talk Back: If you seek a smart city, keep looking