I was shocked at first, then nostalgic, then saddened. Then I got distracted and thought about pre-catalyzed lacquer for a few seconds, but then it was right back to saddened. All because I read that “more than half of Iowa’s nearly 950 cities now have fewer than 500 residents.”

My first thought was that we should start calling them towns instead of cities, so Pilot Mound wouldn’t have to compete in the same category with Hong Kong and London. I mean, how would you feel if you showed up for a basketball game at the Y and had to guard Carmelo Anthony?

Nomenclature only takes you so far, however, and the real problem here is that it’s hard to keep a community thriving with fewer than 500 people. The critical mass for human organizations is way more than that. Most successful groups – AARP, the International Association of Fairs and Expositions, the U.S. Navy – have thousands of people to draw upon. It creates a sense of belonging, forms a deep talent pool and almost guarantees that when you have a meeting, someone will remember to bring snacks.

With 500 people or fewer, random chance never has a chance to get warmed up and show what it can do.

You have to figure that a couple hundred of the residents spend most of their days wandering between the kitchen and the living room; they’re not exactly the Mardi Gras planning committee. Another 100 are still living there only because they have trouble dealing with change, like when the sun comes up. Maybe 50 suggest ideas. Unfortunately, they’re the same ideas they had for the junior-senior prom theme in 1977.

This is why small towns need to pull in new people once in a while. But you can use stop sticks on the highway only so often before the authorities object.

We all like to think that these villages will survive because they represent a way of life that’s friendly, comfortable and generally quite charming. Is charm enough to keep an institution alive? I don’t know; I’ll ask my neighbors the next time we hitch up the team and drive our buggy over to the Grange hall for a fiddling contest.

In a recent press release pitching greater broadband access, Bill Menner, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rural development state director for Iowa, said: “What would happen to Iowa without small towns? Who would be there to promote our long-held ideals of hard work, community service and dedication?”

Good question. Selfishly, I was worrying more about what it would be like if we didn’t have convenience stores every eight miles or so, stocked with cold, refreshing Mountain Dew.

The push for more broadband echoes the theory that in the Internet age, ambitious entrepreneurs can live anywhere, and this will help our towns. True, business founders have their choice of Denver, Paris and Madrid. So far, however, they seem to favor the ones with fine dining, museums and concerts instead of the ones in Iowa offering angle parking.

At this point, Iowa’s smallest towns seem destined to keep shrinking and eventually disappear. Let’s hope we can keep the essential Iowa character alive even in the heartless urban crush of cities like Shenandoah and Decorah.

When I worked for the Marshall County Conservation Board as a kid, we used to drive to Bangor (current population: 30) every couple of weeks and mow a big lot so the locals could use it for recreation. Then we would drive to Quarry (pop. 60) and mow a lonely roadside park.

Maybe we should have spent that time on the phone, trying to sell a young Bill Gates on the advantages of putting businesses into small towns, but who knew?

It might be too late now.

Jim Pollock is the editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by e-mail at jimpollock@bpcdm.com