Category Archives: William W. Starr Musings

Discovering Home

After only a few months here, I’ve found New Englanders unfailingly polite and unflinchingly unafraid to wonder if I’m not from around here. That seems odd only because I always thought that in spite of living my entire life in the South, I carry no far-off accents. Admittedly I don’t sound like natives of Boston, for whom the letter “r” apparently was skipped in kindergarten. (My ca doesn’t pak in Harvad Yad either.)

But those sloshing y’alls, drawn-out syllables and speech so slow it encourages waiters to doze off between restaurant orders, are not part of the usual repertoire. I sound pretty much neutral to me, sort of like coming from South Dakota, I would imagine. Even so, almost every native of the Northeast I’ve run into has observed — pleasantly, mind you — that I seem to have landed from another planet and they’re curious to know which one. It’s sometimes subtle. “Are you from Connecticut” one asked. I overheard two clerks in a store whispering about where they thought I was from. “The Midwest,” one of them concluded.

Nope. Atlanta. And South Carolina, the state where Myrtle Beach is. And when I wasn’t living in one of those two places, I was in North Carolina for a few years. That’s in historical anecdote “the valley of humility” nestled between “two mountains of conceit” (Virginia and South Carolina). It also used to be the politically progressive valley between its more backward-focused neighbors. but that, like so many things, has changed in recent years.

I digress, though. The fact is that there is no one southern accent in the same way one can pinpoint a Boston accent. The soft, rounded speech of long-time Charlestonians seems to have less in common with many sharply syllabic Atlantans than Bostonians have with the rest of New England. And Mississippians can sound continents away from next-door Louisianans. The point is, I suppose, that in some way or another we all are part of stereotypes, which is why there are stereotypes in the first place. Remember: southerners are polite and subtle, northeasterners are blunt and rude. At least that’s what I’ve heard all my life, usually from other southerners, many of whom, it turns out, weren’t actually born in the South but moved there (from Boston).

I beg to differ, based on my limitless experiences of five months living in New Hampshire. The percentage of people who are polite is about the same here as there. In other words, most of them. Unless, of course, they’re driving, in which case they are semi-suicidal, rage-fueled, weapons-totin’ psychos, all of whom have somehow gotten in behind me and are trying to get past me. For that, there is no difference between Atlanta and Boston and New Hampshire and anywhere else, I suppose. But one-on-one, we are all just about alike. We want to get along, and we are pretty much ok with our neighbors. Even if our neighbors don’t sound exactly like we do. And it’s ok to ask about that.

So — no, I’m not from around here. But the truth is that every day it gets harder and harder for me to remember where it was I came from. Home is a bit closer by now, here in the soft, leaf-soaked hills of New Hampshire. Where I park my car in the garage.