Home Town and Home
By ice rivers
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They say that it's bad form for any transplanted New Yorker to complain about the heat in the South.
Na ga da it.
It's one hundred degrees in Charlotte, North Carolina today. It's one hundred degrees plus in many parts of the country today. The globe is awful warm in continental America
Many of we Northerners are moving to the South, we're trading in the merciless, never ending winters for the broiling, exhausting heat. Like all immigrants we are faced with the push pull situation. Rochester, New York is my beloved home town. Rochester is also one of the darkest cities in the world. Our skies are cloudy most days.
We get plenty of sun down here and the skies are famous for the Carolina blue they produce with stunning regularity. When the clouds cast themselves against the blue, it's an ongoing celestial painting, even uptown projected against the skyline.
In Rochester, we have more gratitude for the beautiful days, particularly in the autumn. Yeah, we've got our White Christmas which we don't get down here. We have four distinct seasons in Rochester, in Charlotte not so much. As a result, the folks down here are more consistent in their behavior, less moody. The folks down here tend to speak more slowly which I appreciate. My hearing is in decline supposedly but I'm pretty sure the real problem is that people talk too fast outside of Caroline.
Slow down, baby not you're talking way too fast.
Another aspect of Carolina that I appreciate is that my vote counts in the presidential elections. In New York, because of the electoral college gimmick, my blue vote doesn't count for much because the state is so overwhelmingly Democrat. Same deal in California and Massachusetts where the bulk of the 750,000 write in ballots are cast (Elmer Fudd, Ric Flair, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga etc.) North Carolina is a purple state, in the process of turning blue. We gotta vote down here.
In the end the whole question comes down to air conditioning or heating. I just came in from a half mile walk. As soon as I opened the door to my house, I was greeted with air conditioned cool air which encouraged me to declare "that's what I like about the South." Looking out my window as I type, it's hard to grasp how hot it is outside. I'm not feeling it at all. We're going to visit Birkdale in a few minutes. We'll get into our Buick, snap on the air conditioning and everything is perfect when we reach our destination, we'll walk a few sterps and then once again air conditioning.
Back home when coming in from the freezing cold and slush after shoveling the driveway and scraping the ice off the windshield, it takes a while for the heat to stop the shivering. I've never walked in from the Arctic blasts and said "that's what I like about New York" when I stepped inside the door and felt the "warmth".
My mother in law left the South when she was 18 and vowed that she would never return because of the heat, that was before air conditioning was everywhere. Take air conditioning out of the picture and I'm gonna choose New York big time.
I hear more people from New York claiming that they'd love to relocate to North Carolina than I've heard North Carolinians wanting to move to New York. I love New York. The last time I visited upstate, I couldn't believe how green everything was. We don't get that kind of green down here but the green that we do get tends to stick around a little longer and doesn't really bother with orange or white.
So which is better? There's no comparison really. New York is the Empire State. Compared to New York, North Carolina is minor league but if you're in it for the weather, it's Tar Heel all the way. Taxes and clouds pushed us away from New York. Improved health and sunshine pulled us here.
Sometimes we wonder why more of our friends don't make the move. They haven't reached escape velocity in their personal push pulls.To them, ya just can't beat the green green grass of home.
We agree. Although we have the same home town, we have a differrent home.
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Comments
Interesting to hear about the
Interesting to hear about the diverse climates in the states and how they affect the character of the locals. In the UK our local climate variations are more subtle although the local dialects and even local behaviours are diverse, becoming less so now maybe but we are a small place compared to the great expanses of the US.
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A fascinating comparison of
A fascinating comparison of climate and politics between these two states, which while not a million miles away from each other, seem to be quite different!
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