My mind was wandering the other day (it is a peripatetic thing) and I got to thinking about New England. Which isn’t all that surprising, as I’ve spent all of my 60 years here, except for a self-imposed six-month exile 30 years ago to that converted swamp known as Washington, D.C.
The Wikipedia entry on New England says the six-state region “maintains a strong sense of cultural identity set apart from the rest of the country.” That’s certainly true, in large part because the region is so old, by American standards. New Englanders feel their history in their bones, even if they don’t always have a strong grasp of who did what when back in the day.
What people from elsewhere may fail to realize, though, is that although New Englanders see this northeastern corner of America as a distinct region, the states that comprise it are far from homogeneous.
There are the obvious differences, of course. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont tend to be more rural and more mountainous than Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, which are more urban, more heavily congested and just plain flatter than their northern counterparts.
But there are differences in attitude as well. Each of the six states sees itself as distinctive, and good-natured putdowns abound. New Hampshire and Vermont have a longstanding rivalry of sorts, for example, partly because New Hampshire is more conservative, politically, than its neighbor to the west. Think "live free or die" (New Hampshire) and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont).
As the most populous state in the region, the oldest and the home of New England’s pro-sports giants, Massachusetts has a condescending attitude toward the rest of New England. This manifests itself in periodic Boston newspaper columns about New Hampshire that describe the Granite State as some sort of northern hillbilly heaven akin to Dogpatch, the setting of the old Li’l Abner comic strip. Puffed up Boston TV stations sometimes describe themselves as New England's source for news, even though no one in the other five states watches Boston newscasts.
In New Hampshire, home of the White Mountains, people from Massachusetts are sometimes known as “flatlanders,” a derogatory but generally accurate term that reflects the physical differences between the two states. Xenophobic Mainers are more blunt. Folks here describe people from the Bay State as “Massholes,” but usually only in private conversations during the summer tourism season. Maine is isolated - the only state among the contiguous 48 that borders only one other state - so you have to cut us some slack when it comes to distrusting people "from away."
Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union, would fit into Massachusetts several times over, and that’s saying something because Massachusetts isn’t very big. Thanks to their state's lilliputian size, Rhode Islanders have a distorted sense of distance; a 40-mile trip requires months of prep, an experienced guide and a cooler full of food. (Okay, the guide is optional.) People elsewhere in New England associate Little Rhody with the mob, which is unfortunate because that ignores the state’s natural beauty, rich architecture, fascinating history and educational gems (Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, etc.).
And then there is that stepchild of New England: Connecticut. With its proximity to New York, Connecticut doesn’t fall within Boston’s orbit to the extent that the rest of New England does. In fact, the other states in the region seem to view Connecticut as a pimple on New York's backside, a place where misguided baseball fans actually root for the Yankees. Still, the rest of us claim Connecticut for ourselves when it suits our purposes, such as if the conversation turns to Mark Twain (Hartford), Mystic Seaport (Mystic), casinos (Mashantucket and Uncasville) or such prominent colleges and universities as Yale (New Haven), Wesleyan (Middletown) and Trinity (Hartford).
New England may be a distinct region, but as with any family, the members of our clan are, first and foremost, individuals, and these six siblings don't always see eye to eye.
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