I love subjects like that. Peter Santenello does some of my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3O6bKdPLbw
He just takes people as they come, without judgement. That’s something many people don’t know how to do, just listen and try to understand others.
She was driving up with her dad to his fishing camp. In Wisconsin.
It sounds like your family entered the Depression without any debts whatsoever, and escaped foreclosure and repossession. That wasn’t true for most people.
My FIL’s family moved from Chicago to live with a relative in - I forget - either rural WI or MI. And my mom’s family moved from Mass to Iowa to be closer to farming family.
Seriously, my example was in support of @solost’s point about that the issue is more small town vs outsiders outside of the political elements of the divide as suggested by the OP. Having said that, no, the locals I interacted with didn’t want to be “left alone” exactly, they just wanted the tourists to come, spend money, but be less disruptive. Don’t get me wrong, there was also ABSOLUTELY a good bit of racial animus in many cases, because most Colorado Mountain Towns are/were lily-white, and some are far too gone into the sort of rural, Christian mono-culture that makes me wince, but -much- of the dislike was based on valid complaints.
The concerns I specifically cited:
Includes the most common specific complaints, along with the direct answer to your question “happily take the money”. And that applies to certain tourist towns that lean very blue overall, although the surrounding areas are often deep red - so again, not just the political divide causing issues.
During the Great Depression in Saskatchewan, farms were badly hit by the drought and farm production dropped.
I think tribalism is something different- it’s an “us vs. them” sort of mentality, and a lot of this sort of feeling in small towns seems to be as much directed inward as outward in my limited experience. That’s why I said “conformity”, in that everyone inside is supposed to conform outwardly, and to the outside world, they present a uniform front.
And the main driver of everything is to minimize disharmony/disruption. If everyone looks and acts within “normal parameters”, everything is ok. But new ideas, new people, and people not following the script are all disruptive and with that comes change, which is scary in its own right, but also brings the spectre of what they know and love being changed.
I understand.
To me that sounds like opening a Day Care for children and then complaining about the children being children. Sure, they’d rather make their money by the kids coming and napping the whole time till pick-up but that’s not how it works.
Personally, I have no patience for such complaints. I’ve worked as a waiter a few times and I certainly had some bad customers who I would complain about but I never complained about the customers as a whole. Some were absolutely great and made my day. Most were in the middle…neither particularly good nor bad. But it was how I made my living at the time and if I didn’t like restaurant patrons I chose the wrong job and that’s on me.
Yes, I noticed as well. I would have told him “My values are honesty, compassion, hard work, courage and respect. I’m sad to hear that your town does not think any of those values are worth having. Goodbye.”
I mostly agree, but think the difference comes from the last line of your post that I’ve quoted above. If you live in some of these small towns, places you and your family have lived possibly for several generations, you didn’t -choose- the job as it were, you’ve been there from when it was an actual mining concern, or something similar. But from that POV, the tourist invasion has only been going on for, say, 40 years or so, so especially for older residents, it is a noticeable and unwelcome change.
Still, you’re mostly correct, there is always going to be a range of individuals, and treating them all with contempt is unjustified, but it’s the worst examples that always stand out, in this as any other enterprise. And people who are on vacation, especially during a ski holiday where other than getting smashed, there isn’t much to do in these little towns (well, some have legalized gambling which is a whole 'nother can of worms) - a lot of bad behavior is just “having a good time”.
Granted, most of my direct interaction with actual locals was 20ish years ago, and maybe things are less rowdy now that everyone can bring an entertainment library in their pocket, but the people I know who go to Cripple Creek every few months to blow a paycheck are probably just as bad (win or especially lose).
Sure, the people working at those casinos are in the same boat you were, they chose to work there, but everyone else in town is stuck with some of the bad behavior, even if they teach school all day or some other unrelated job.
Yep, things were tough. Many kids went to the USA to find work, my Mother found work at Boeing, where she met my Dad.
I’ve spent several weekends in Bolinas (back in the 90s) with an ex, and we had a splendid time each weekend. I didn’t feel any hostility at all. The whole Bolinas “thing” is not terribly serious.
The signs keep get taken down.
We stayed a week in Bolinas a few years ago, it was pleasant and quiet.
We never saw a sign, but still found our way. It’s really not a big deal.
For those of us not familiar with Bolinas, could you explain the back-story about the sign? Thanks!
When I lived in the SF Bay Area, in the 80s, I often saw this bumper sticker: “Welcome to California. Now go home.”
wiki- The community is known for its reclusive residents. It is only accessible via unmarked roads; any road sign along State Route 1 that points the way into town has been torn down by local residents,[8] to the point where county officials offered a ballot measure to which the voters responded by stating a preference for no more signs.[9]
That was because Oregon at that time was doing things like egging and slashing tires of Californios.
I don’t believe that the example in the OP is necessarily reflective of a partisan divide, but more of a state/regionalism divide. They don’t want people bringing their big city ways, trying to change their local culture, regardless of the outsider’s political affiliation. And that isn’t new. Parts of the northern midwest have been that way since Teddy Roosevelt explored there.
So it doesn’t really support the “Divide in America” that the OP is trying to promote exists.
It’s not entirely divorced and it’s more along racial lines than many would like to think.
It’s not an accident of history that Black Americans historically gravitated more to the cities following the Civil War. Likewise the slow, and in some cases almost non-existent, diffusion of later immigrant groups like the Irish and Italians (both traditionally Catholic) and now more and more from Asia (lots of non-Christians) from the major urban centers to rural areas. There’s a reason we still talk about WASPs to this day.
We decided one year to go to the Pendleton Roundup in eastern Oregon. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a big-deal rodeo event. Took the RV out there and parked in a lot designed for the purpose. Went to the rodeo and enjoyed it. Upon leaving, we got a lot of hostile looks from young intoxicated guys in plastic cowboy hats, so we hurried along to where our RV was parked. On the way out of the lot, I stopped to ask the guy at the entrance for a suggestion as to the quickest way back to the interstate. Some asshole sitting in the booth keeping him company piped up “I got a fuckin’ suggestion for you.” Not one to take someone’s shit, I looked him in the eye and said “What might that be?” The other guy jumped in right away and averted anything physical.
Never went back there and always recommended to others that they not bother going unless they were interested in rude drunks and aggressive assholes.