Which U.S. state is the most forgettable?

In My Humble Opinion
81

[QUOTE=desdinova]
I’m honestly not surprised to hear this suggestion in this thread. Still, here’s a short list of things that the great state of Oklahoma has to contribute:

  • Rodgers and Hammerstein set one of the most popular musicals in history here. I forget the name of it, but I think our state song came from it.
  • Some guy bombed a building with fertilizer over a decade ago. It was a big deal until some other guys destroyed some towers in New York City.
  • Will Rogers and James Garner came from here, and they’re pretty cool :cool:
  • We have waving wheat, which can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain.
  • We gave the world shopping carts, and also Sonic drive-ins.
  • The whole Indian Territory thing was kind of important in American history.
  • Frank Lloyd Wright built a pretty cool highrise in Bartlesville, which I think is his only one. There’s some pretty sweet art deco buildings in downtown Tulsa also, owing to the vast amount of money in Tulsa during the height of the art deco movement.
  • Weird Al’s movie UHF was shot in Tulsa, including a bunch of extras from the area including me :cool:
  • Ned Flanders graduated from Oral Roberts University.
  • Tulsa recently unearthed a Plymouth Belvedere from 1957. It would have been in better shape if those 1950s guys weren’t incompetent and the vault hadn’t flooded.
  • Oklahoma City has a variety of positive attributes to contribute, I’m sure.
  • John Steinbeck wrote a book about wrath and grapes that was pretty popular.
  • There’s a cool runestone near Heavener, Oklahoma

That’s about it off the top of my head. Personally, my vote is for either Nebraska or Delaware.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry, these are mostly pretty pathetic. A terrorist attack occurred here? A fictional character graduated from a resident Christian university named for a televangelist?

This reminds me of the town Smithville,TX which proudly proclaims itself as ‘home of Hope Floats.’

82

I cannot believe anyone could nominate Michigan. Obviously they never sat on the beautiful sands of Lake Michigan enjoying the lake breeze, then jump the waves in the cool lake water. Or sat in the stands during a Michigan-Michigan State football game. Or strolled the car-free streets of Mackinac Island. Or… (I could go on and on). We’re hurricane-proof and earthquake-resistant too!

For me it’s a tossup between Alabama and Mississippi. Both have itty-bitty coastlines, no mountains, no major sports teams, just border-to-border blah.

83

I’d have to go with Iowa or Nebraska. Until mentioned abovem I totally forgot Nebraska existed and if someone had asked me to name all the states, it would have been absent.

You don’t hear a lot of pop culture reference to Oregon or Idaho either, but Iowa and Nebraska have to be way up there on the list of “Where now?”

84

[QUOTE=Happy Lendervedder]
People from the east seem to be defending places like Maine and Delaware and Connecticut.
[/QUOTE]

Someone defended Connecticut?

85

It seems to me that most people in this thread are misinterpreting “forgettable”. Every state will conjure up images of something in most intelligent Americans. Idaho makes me think of potatoes. Vermont, maple syrup and Ben & Jerry’s. North Dakota, cold winters.

I think the real intent of this thread (and someone else hit on this earlier) is to come up with the state that is the furthest from your mind in day to day stuff. A state may make you think of things, but do those things make you think of the state? I associate cars with Michigan, but I don’t think about Detroit every time I see a car. Nor do I think about Idaho every time I eat a french fry.

There must be states that only appear in your mind when you’re thinking real hard about all the states. As I said earlier, that’s not Wyoming for me, because I invoke the idea of Wyoming regularly when I need to make a comparison with somewhere with a whole lotta nothin’.

But Idaho and North Dakota are definitely up there for me. Again, I have things I associate with the mention of these places. But the converse isn’t really true. Not much makes me think of these places automatically.

86

[QUOTE=gravitycrash]
Louisiana gets my vote. What a bleak state, are there even any hills? All of my customers seem to be grumpy, southern hospitality? To be fair, all three towns have paper mills..jeez, what a terrible odor.
Honorable mention goes to Mississippi, can you say sharecropper shacks along a major interstate?
[/QUOTE]

I would guess that most people would rank Louisiana among the MOST memorable states. I find it hard to believe that someone would nominate it here. New Orleans? Katrina? Mardis Gras? Unique French, Spanish, and Southern History? Unique legal system? Cajuns? Several world-class cusines of its own? Debauchery? Superbowls? Crawfish? The Sugar Bowl? Swampland? Gulf of Mexico Oil? Beautiful planations? LSU sports? Convention mecca? I could go on.

Lousiana doesn’t fit on this list. Most people the world over could tell you key things about it. It is also an international vacation and convention destination.

87

I cannot believe Nebraska keeps making people’s lists. Does a unicameral legislature count for nothing?

For those who don’t care about civics, I would think that the football team which (recent years excepted) generally finds it way into the national polls would push the state onto the radar screen.

Still…I sit here flabbergasted. UNICAMERAL, PEOPLE.

88

Here’s another vote for the Hoosier State.

Welcome to Indiana, set your watch back 10 years.

Indiana. North Bend is south, South Bend is north, and French Lick is not what you think it is.

89

Any state mentioned automatically precludes it from the discussion.

90

[QUOTE=Usram]

But really, I couldn’t state a single fact about Minnesota apart from that Minneapolis is in it.
[/QUOTE]

Hey, don’t you forget it’s got one of the world’s biggest balls of twine! (Weird Al Yankovic wrote a song called “Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.”) It’s also associated with cold winters, ice fishing, hunting, lots of Lutherans and the potlucks that come with them, hot chicks of Scandinavian ancestry, and liberal politics (after all, Minnesota was the only state to have its electoral votes go to Mondale in the 84 election, and Paul Wellstone, the outspoken liberal senator who died in a plane crash a few years back, hailed from there). It’s got the crazy “Fargo” accents (parts of it, anyway), and it was crazy enough to elect former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as its governor. It’s also home to “A Prairie Home Companion.”

91

Yipes. Above post was mine.

92

[QUOTE=Aesiron]
Fort Sumter?
[/QUOTE]
:confused: New Mexico, innit?
Er, wait - that’s Ft. Sumner. Hmm, I thought Sumter was in Arkansas or something.

93

[QUOTE=VCO3]
Wyoming. I always forget it exists and have never met a person from there.
[/QUOTE]
Try driving across the bottom of it on I-80 just once. You won’t forget it after that!

94

I don’t think Idaho can be THAT forgettable. Granted, I’m sure no one knows anything about the state other than potatoes, but still - every time you walk in to do grocery store you’re going to see a bag of potatoes with a stamp in the shape of Idaho on it.

I vote for Arkansas. There is absolutely nothing I know about Arkansas. I do know that the Clintons are from Little Rock but even still, I think of them as being from Little Rock not Arkansas.

I’m not even entirely sure where Arkansas is. East of the Mississippi? West of the Mississippi? I know it’s somewhere down south, east of Texas. I’m actually quite good at US geography.

And for those who are nominating Ohio - screw you! :smiley: You’re obviously just not paying attention if you think we have nothing to offer. At least consider that several of our finer cities are often the butt of jokes!

95

[QUOTE=Omniscient]
Plus that Steven King guy tends to write about it.
[/QUOTE]

Plus it has the only remaining functioning Shaker village in America. That sort of thing tends to put a state solidly on the map.

Also, when the Canadian dollar is strong, Canucks flock to the state of Maine, which they seem to regard as their spiritual beach home. Maine and Florida are probably the least forgettable states for Canadians.

96

Of the states getting the most votes here, most of them conjure up images associated with them:

Delaware: Corporations, small state, 1st state, arc border
Michigan: Cars, mitten, Kelloggs
Oregon: One of only 3 mainland west coast states, hard to ignore that
Minnesota: Vikings, democrats, Al Franken, Mondale, lakes, northernmost
Wyoming: Least population, Yellowstone, 1st women’s vote
Montana: Big Sky, Glacier Park, 4th largest
Nebraska: Corn, college football, Mutual of Omaha
Miss./Ala.: Civil rights problems, lowest education scores - coincidence?
South Dakota: Mt. Rushmore
South Carolina: 1st secession, Charleston, Ft. Sumpter, palmettos
Oklahoma: Natives, Sooners, panhandle
Idaho: Potatoes, beauty, gems, Snake River, Continental Divide, shape, militias
Maine: Lobster, farthest northeast mainland, Stephen King, nearest Africa
Connecticut: New York suburb, Conn. Compromise, basketball
Missouri: Western Gateway, Arch, Lewis & Clark, MO River, Ozarks
Wisconsin: Cheese, beer, Happy Days, Laverene & Shirley, Packers
Louisiana: Purchase, New Orleans, Katrina, Saints, Cajun, Miss. River delta
Maryland: Nice flag, not quite DC, Mason Dixon, Baltimore, Star Spangled Banner
Arkansas: Clinton, school integration
Kansas: Wheat, Wizard of Oz, Brown v. Board, Dodge
North Dakota: Cold?
New Mexico: Santa Fe, turquoise

My votes in order:

  1. Kansas
  2. Wyoming
  3. Nebraska
  4. Connecticut
  5. Maryland
  6. Oklahoma
  7. South Dakota
  8. New Mexico
  9. Arkansas
    1. NORTH DAKOTA

Glad to see crips & bloods made the top 4 in California, nevermind Yosemite, redwoods, beaches, and gold :wink:

97

Kansas. If you had to use an atlas for TP, it’d be the page you’d tear out.

98

[QUOTE=Kat]
Someone defended Connecticut?
[/QUOTE]

OK, I’ll defend Connecticut, as I grew up and still have family there. It’s got Yale University, Skull and Bones, really great pizza, UConn basketball, a couple of enormous casinos, the submarine shipyard and naval base, the Coast Guard Academy, Mark Twain (who wrote some of his best stuff while living there) and it’s got the Connecticut River, which defines New England.

But I have to admit that when I’m flying home and am sitting in the terminal at O’Hare or Atlanta waiting to board a flight to Bradley airport in Windsor Locks, that I look around and am amazed that they can actually find 200 or so people who voluntarily want to fly to Connecticut.

99

Shagnasty, how did you manage to travel the whole east coast and not pass through Delaware?

I went to school in Delaware and now live here, but I’m sorry to say that it has to get my vote. As soon as I leave the East Coast, I find that my state no longer exists –

“Delaware, that’s a city in New Jersey, right?”
“Oh, I know Delaware, that’s a county in Pennsylvania.”
“Dela-where?”

I was in college when Wayne’s World came out. We missed about five minutes of the film after the Delaware gag because we were all laughing so hard.

100

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
No offense to those living in upstate New York, but I’d have to say that the name “New York” is so closely associated with just the City, in the popular mind, that the rest of the state might seem just an afterthought, to some people.
[/QUOTE]

Both times I traveled through New York State, I was impressed by the beauty. Granite mountains! Glacier scoured lakes! Quaint towns! (No, it wasn’t winter time.)

So very unlike my almost-home state. Texas. The one that so many people would love to forget.