Another thing about Missouri: For “The Show-Me State”, there sure are a lot of religious people there. More like “The Tell-Me-And-I’ll-Believe-It State”.
Many of us who don’t live in California are afraid to even visit there because we know that someday a big earthquake is going to cause the whole state to fall into the ocean.
I almost forgot - all the corn in the whole world is grown in Iowa.
Ditto for all the potatoes in the whole world being grown in Idaho.
Or, as some of us down in Maryland like to say- “Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and 200 miles of Alabama in between.”
I’m a Tidewater resident. The quote about VDOT actually came from Bette Midler, who did a concert in Hampton in February. Her limo got stuck in one of the infamous construction traffic jams on I-64 when she was heading to the Hampton Coliseum.
The Tidewater VDOT district is grossly incompetent, and several VDOT officials have lost their jobs because of the construction delays and cost overruns.
Arizona – In winter, full of stupid college kids, horny airmen/women, and slow-driving, dusty old ancient wrecks of senior citizens. Populace speaks Spanish in summer, when those people are gone.
California – Everyone thinks we want to live there. We don’t, otherwise we would, and our combined weight would tip the US into the ocean.
Colorado – Most people who haven’t been there think the whole state is the Rockies. I, who have, can honestly say it’s one huge flat hot plain, and then there are the Rockies.
Florida – People there can’t understand how to vote. Also, they shoot at one another a lot. And they can’t drive, but no one else can anyway, so that’s okay.
Georgia – Best iced tea in the country. Also delicious fresh peaches.
Illinois – Chicago is like a blight on this state. The rest of Illinois can be quite nice, with small towns and friendly people. But then again, I don’t like large cities.
Indiana – my home state. Cows, corn and construction, for sure…and Indy 500. Oh, and basketball. There’s a lot more here, but you are asking for stereotypes. I love the place, and want to move back.
Kansas – I’ve only driven through it at night. Seems like it’s in perfect working order, although you guys ought to untangle some of your interchanges.
Kentucky – Beautiful landscapes and hills.
Michigan – Please, could you pretty please stop telling me that we’re all p^ssies because we don’t get ten feet of snow? Then can you please push all that snow up your rectums? Thanks.
Minnesota – Mosquitos and the Mall of America. Also other assorted junk. (I’m spending six weeks there this summer, please have pity on my mosquito-bite-spotted hide)
Ohio – I understand Cleveland is a pit, or at least the rest of the state thinks so. I actually like Ohio – it’s huge. I haven’t even been through the eastern half of it. If you like football and hate Michigan, Columbus is the place for you. If you want to be at the juncture of four states, Cincinnati is perfect. Up north on the lake you will find some wonderful vacation spots.
Rhode Island – Filled with pretentious people who drive Alpha Romeros and wear hundreds of bracelets. I met them all on my honeymoon.
Texas – good beer, lots of people.
Vermont – Stop telling us your state is beautiful and then bemoaning the hordes of visitors in fall. Suck it up!
Washington – Take them out of their natural environment and they gasp like fish on shore. It’s too cold! Too hot!
Hi, Nightwatch, I’m from central MS (Smith County). Good to see another Mississippian here. I’m currently exiled in Yankeeland (aka Maryland) but here’s my impression of my home state:
Jackson is the biggest thing we have, and it’s not very big. I lived there for a while, but I’ve also lived in the most rural communities imaginable. There’s some incredible beauty in backwoods Mississippi, and some incredible poverty as well.
There’s the requisite trailer parks where I lived in Raleigh, but most folks owned houses, including my family. We built our home on land that had been in our family for 200 years, and we even have a slave graveyard out back.
There’s some crushing poverty, especially among the black communities in rural MS. I’ll never forget riding on the school bus and seeing some of the rundown places my classmates had to live at. But even some of the poorest kids, who lived in shacks with no utilities, still had horses to ride and beautiful wilderness to play in. I’ve seen similar poverty in Baltimore, where the children have to play in back alleys filled with broken glass and dirty needles, under the watchful eyes of drug dealers and hookers. I’ll take MS any day over that.
I’m very proud of my Southern accent, I think it’s very lovely. Most folks have 'em.
Racist: There is a lot of racism, blatant racism, but the most dangerous kind isn’t the obvious “lets go lynch us some negroes” type, but the more subtle, pervading racism that keeps blacks in low-paying jobs without benefits, stops them from acquiring a quality education, and makes them much more likely than whites to be imprisoned. That kind of ‘invisible racism’ is prevalant everywhere.
Definitely. Catholics are very rare in central Mississippi, Jews are almost unheard-of, and other religions are non-existent. The Southern Baptists practically rule quite a few towns. Being an atheist here isn’t pleasant.
One of the tips my relatives gave me before shipping me to Maryland was “Don’t be offended by the Yankees. They don’t know they’re being rude.” And y’all don’t. It was a big shock the first couple of weeks, because Northerners come on so hard – very aggressive and blunt. We just have a certain way of acting, of speaking, of saying without saying, and that is our hospitality.
I was incredibly amused by the Minnesottans and others Midwesterners here when they insisted Maryland’s 30 degree winters were “warm”! I hope I get to see how they handle being outside in 100 degree heat with 100% humidity! They’d probably melt.
“Rhode Island – Filled with pretentious people who drive Alpha Romeros and wear hundreds of bracelets. I met them all on my honeymoon.”
You went to Rhode Island on your honeymoon? Isn’t it Virginia that’s for lovers?
Anyway, I live in Rhode Island and have never seen an Alpha Romeo, but it is the state of lobstas and mobstas so maybe you met the mobstas. Also, Rhode Island is the state that everything is approximately the size of. As in, “so and so’s Texas Ranch, which is approximately the size of Rhode Island…”
No, no, we honeymooned in northern California, and met these people over breakfast at the B&B. The man was VERY interested in describing all of his Alpha Romeros and the woman, seriously, could hardly bend her wrists from all the silver.
They also referred to Rhode Island as “Rhody,” which I found as disgusting as the rest of their snooty conversation.
The woman would say “When my husband was driving us around in his WONDERFUL cars through Rhody,” and then she’d flip her hair and the bracelets would clash and my gorge would rise.
We met some colorful people that week! They might have been mobstas – they were certainly uncouth and unsavory.
In addition, everyone thinks you’re batshit crazy when you decide to move away from Hawaii and live somewhere else.
Massachusetts: Everyone else in New England calls us MassHoles. Go figure.
New Hampshire: Commonly regarded as inbred, gun-toting kooks.
Vermont: Ski country. Crunchy, independent. Weird. Highest STD rate in the country among the college-aged, population-wise.
Maine: Canadians without that annoying French flair.
Rhode Island: Yes. It’s really a state. Barely. Providence boasts an underground railway to Italy.
Conneticut: I’m not even sure if CT is part of New England. Huh.
:::trailing off:::
What was I talking about?
I’m from Colorado. I recently visited AZ, and on 5 different occasions, apon meeting someone new . . . .
“You smoke pot right?”
One of my most pervasive memories of visiting Washington D.C. is of the homeless people lining the roads, asking for money or trying to sell you whatever little things they found lying on the street. Mississippi may not be rich, but I’ve never seen anything like that down here, even in the more rural areas. And you’re definitely right about having fields and woods to play in instead of dirty alleys.
I think I would die in my first winter in a northern state. Mississippi has conditioned me to the point where anything below freezing (as seldom as that happens :)) is almost unbearable.
I live in central Pennsylvania (abbreviated PA), and I only have one thing to say – We’re not all Amish!!! The state is big enough that we really don’t bother to make fun of the other states, because we have Philadelphia and Pittsburgh for that. 
We’re just above the Mason-Dixon line (which separates the north of the United States from the south), but we’re unmistakably Yankees.
Both stereotypes true, plus: everyone surfs, drinks mai tais and sits around at the beach when not surfing. No old folks here (except tourists), the ‘natives are friendly,’ evryone has the “aloha spirit,” hula is a sexy dance done to steel guitar music and nobody cares about anything. ‘Haole’ means ‘white person’ or ‘mainlander.’ Did I miss anything? probably.
To shatter stereotypes: (and conquer ignorance)::
- There is NO ethnic majority.
- Everyone is reasonably friendly face-to-face and secretly hates all the other ethnic groups, or, anyway, has their own preconceived stereotypes of other ethnic groups. Most people are obsequiously overly friendly, and there is probably less overt racism here than anywhere else I’ve been. There is a lot of “aloha spirit” but most of it manifests as caring within communities and a lot of it is just for making people from whom you want something feel more comfortable (like tourist dollars or votes for politicians).
- Most families have two (or more) jobs; only the ‘upper class’ or very poor have ‘stay-at-home-moms.’
- Milk runs up to $7 per gallon ($4.20 on sale). Everything is expensive.
- More military per capita than Wash. D.C.
- The ‘natives’ can be friendly, and many do a better job at Aloha than most of us imports, but a large segment of the Native Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian population feel rightfully disenfranchised (since the U.S. aided in overthrowing the Hawaiian government by force and stealing the land held by the crown) and do everything they can to get everyone else shipped back where they came from. Strangely enough some early immigrant families (Portugese) identify so closely with the Native Hawaiian population they share the same resentments and disenfranchised feelings. I’m not trashing Portugese or calling them ‘wannabees,’ merely identifying the close bonds that are shared with the Hawaiians.
- Everybody cares about everything and screams at everyone else to do something about it (yet they/we still vote incompetent incumbents back into office). Some few do grab a problem and take off leading others into possible solutions, but they are few though their deeds are mighty.
- Hula is a wonderful Native Hawaiian spiritual dance art form that along with Hawaiian chants preserves aspects of the culture and mythology, and drums are the musical insrument. It’s not like you see on TV.
- ‘Haole’ - well, there’s still some debate about what it means, and surely captain Cook was among the first we know of to be called ‘haole,’ but originally the term meant anyone not Hawaiian or anything foreign, so theoretically ‘haole’ includes Chinese, Japanese, certainly Portugese (though those three groups at least only consider non-Portugese Caucasians as ‘haole,’ and exempt themselves) and probably anyone not Polynesian, but in common usage is restricted to Caucasians-except-Portugese. Some linguists think that the term means “without breath or without life” (ha = breath, life, a`ole=without) referring to the habit of the first visitors to shake hands when meeting rather than breathing into each others’ mouths and/or placing cheeks close together and sniffing or breathing on one another, as in the traditional Hawaiian greeting. The breath being associated originally as somehow connected with the spirit of a person, we can extrapolate accordingly.
A long first post, I know, but I take my job seriously.
“All those moments, will be lost, in time… like…(gulp) tears… in rain. Time to die.”
(Attrib on request)
New York: I’ve lived and visited throughout most of the state, so here’s my views:
There’s New York City: depending on where you are, NYC culture can be as restricted as a few square blocks in downtown Manhattan or as expansive as reaching all the way up the Hudson River to Kingston. NYC culture is defined by feeling you’re more closely connected to NYC than those hicks who live “upstate”.
Midstate New York culture is rural farmland and small towns which are based around the “city”. Depending on where you’re at the “city” might be Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Elmira, Rochester, Syracuse, or Utica (try to avoid the last one if you have a choice). Most of these cities are declining from their peak periods fifty or a hundred years ago but still have some life in them. What competiveness exists is usually directed against the other midestate cities. People here tend to think of NYC as a distant place with no effect on their daily lives.
Upstate New York is essentially the western end of New England. Rural farming communities with little else. Resentment against the rest of the state for ignoring its problems and in some cases (like the Adirondack Park Agency) creating them. The one area of the state which gets a significant share of its culture from out of state (Vermont, Quebec, or Ontario depending on location).
No, no. We have that too. I guess you could say we have the worst of both worlds.
Yep yep. Freezing cold and humid heat. I live in the Detroit area, so it doesn’t get quite as bad, but I’ve experienced 100+ degree with so much humidity it looks like fog quite often, along with winter days where it’s sub-zero.
Ah, yes Cleveland, TN where Ray Jackson and a few others made fortunes manufacturing upholstered furniture.
Well almost the entire state of Tennessee almost did not secede from the Union. Franklin County which is on the Alabama border was the only county to secede from the Union, because it was tired of waiting for the rest of the state.
A bit confusing but I think I get your meaning. Thing is that eastern Tennessee is part of Appalachia and therefore to a great degree used to be/still is considerably isolationist. It is true that the one president that came from the area tried to be very progressive, but all it got him was the title of “the first and only (until Bill Clinton) president to be impeached.” During those 80 years, the southern Democrats and the Republicans regularly voted together in a coilation against the northern Democrats, so the distinction you were implying was not that big a deal.
I beg to differ with your phrase “the rest of the state”. The area in and around Tupelo leads the state in manufacturing and Tupelo has a marketing area that totals over 600,000. As a city of less than 50,000 it has a daytime population of over 100,000. The hospital is the largest in the state and largest in the U.S. located in a non-metropolian area (metropolitan meaning a city over 100,000). Hancock Fabrics (based in Tupelo) is one of two MS corporations listed on the big board. I believe the other is Worldcom (enough said). The Furniture Market buildings have more show space than all the space available in the rest of the state put together. All of this is not to take away from the Gulf Coast only differing with the impression that it stands alone in the state.
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Same goes to what she and Nightwatch Trailer said about the poor in our state compared to elsewhere. The Tunica area used to be what defined Mississippi’s poor. The casinos have done much to uplift that area. That is not to say that we think the problem doesn’t exist.
Please, that only strenghtens to belief that we Americans don’t know our own geography. 
I’m ok with that. I guess knowing we’re better than everyone else could be preceived as assholishness.
Somehow, the entire region (besides MA and Conn) is supposed to be made up of farms and small fishing villiages, at least if the books set here that you read by non-New Englanders are what you go by; I’ve never met a farmer or a commerical fisher yet. We really do have real towns, and a few cities even. I can see how you’d miss them though, since they’re buried under snow four to six months of the year… Touched by civilization, we can go shoppin’ and everything and a lot of us don’t hunt or even have our own guns.
Southerners, on the other hand, are known for eating things that aren’t food, thinking slow and talking slower (heat fries the brain, of course, which is one of the only good things about the unrelenting cold), and having more guns and pickup trucks per family than most people in our towns do.