Southern Mentality (Charlotte, Asheville, Boone: coupons, house, buy)

[lorriem]

Originally Posted by Catamount79

I think what your missing is that people from the south are tired of people moving here in droves and trying to change the landscape and culture of the area.

How would you like if it you had been living in one place your entire life and a large group from another part of the country moved to your area and tried to change the way of life?

Change is not always good.

Goodness that happens everywhere. We lived in CA for 25 years and in the late 70's it was a nice friendly little town. Now from the influx of business and people from all over the US and outside the US have runied that nice little town. WNC is just like any other part of the US so most people have experieced the same thing.

One thing is if us outsiders hadn't moved here would your economy be worse?

[chickenista]

Originally Posted by lorriem

Goodness that happens everywhere. We lived in CA for 25 years and in the late 70's it was a nice friendly little town. Now from the influx of business and people from all over the US and outside the US have runied that nice little town. WNC is just like any other part of the US so most people have experieced the same thing.

One thing is if us outsiders hadn't moved here would your economy be worse?

Now, I am speaking of the hardcore mountain people when I say this...
wouldn't make much difference.
WNC mountains have always been poor and the people have barely eeked along, growing and putting away what they could. It is a tough, hard way to live. BUT, it is the way they have always lived.
The ones that couldn't cut it moved away and the ones that could stayed and did it.
It is harder now as there is not as much wildlife and too many fences and many native plants and their habitats are gone.

But I am gonna guess and say that for some folks it would be worth it.

[abarrier]

I am a firm believer that you get what you give. The people in this area area welcoming and friendly. Some folks who move in are all about "the way we do up there". Nobody wants to hear that. If you are looking for politeness, kindness, and generosity then the South is for you. If you want to come here and convert everyone to your way of thinking, please don't come.

[Asheville Native]

Originally Posted by lorriem

WNC is just like any other part of the US so most people have experieced the same thing.

Though this has nothing to do with race, I am going to use the analogy of mixing colors. There are many colors in our society, and when thoroughly mixed by people moving in and forcing their 'color' (viewpoints and ways) on those of another 'color', the end results is just a dirty unpleasant color that suits no one and destroys the vibrant colors that existed.

Get out the kids paint set and paint a small area with all the colors and see if you find the results appealing.

You wax nostalgic about the little town in CA. Sounds great, why did you leave? Oh yea, you said it was overrun with outsiders, and I bet it isn't the pleasant little town now.

Originally Posted by lorriem

One thing is if us outsiders hadn't moved here would your economy be worse?

I don't know why that is always used an an argument, perhaps because it is difficult to challenge. But look at a great many of the ills of the area, are they not caused by the masses moving here? Straining the infrastructure to the breaking point, turning once beautiful mountains into butt ugly building sites for McMansions, the environmental damage that creates. These are represent serious costs to the quality of life.

Southerners are not the ones that invented the "keeping up with the Jone's" mentality. We value the peace and contentment within our lives and not the collection of status vehicles parked in a 4 car garage.

[lorriem]

Originally Posted by Asheville Native

Though this has nothing to do with race, I am going to use the analogy of mixing colors. There are many colors in our society, and when thoroughly mixed by people moving in and forcing their 'color' (viewpoints and ways) on those of another 'color', the end results is just a dirty unpleasant color that suits no one and destroys the vibrant colors that existed.

Get out the kids paint set and paint a small area with all the colors and see if you find the results appealing.

You wax nostalgic about the little town in CA. Sounds great, why did you leave? Oh yea, you said it was overrun with outsiders, and I bet it isn't the pleasant little town now.

I don't know why that is always used an an argument, perhaps because it is difficult to challenge. But look at a great many of the ills of the area, are they not caused by the masses moving here? Straining the infrastructure to the breaking point, turning once beautiful mountains into butt ugly building sites for McMansions, the environmental damage that creates. These are represent serious costs to the quality of life.

Southerners are not the ones that invented the "keeping up with the Jone's" mentality. We value the peace and contentment within our lives and not the collection of status vehicles parked in a 4 car garage.

I never said we moved because we were run out by outsiders. Do not put words in my Post. We moved because of a job transfer.
I never even said keeping up with the Jones "there you go again". Everyone who has moved here buys window treatments, Furniture and spends more money in the supermarkets and retail stores. Is that not a good thing??? To you maybe not. If that is keeping up with the Jones you have a different jones in mind. We also buy homes that weren't selling or buying new therefore keeping the job force up a bit. Don't rewite my post. We also add to the tax base.
We didn't buy a McMansions only a 1600 sq ft home or is that to big for you also?

Really so sorry that we added color to your state. Btw we find people here very friendly and have expected when we ask them to do something that they will get around to it when they can. We do need help at times since hubby had LC a few years ago and is not able to do everything that he use to do. Do you begrudge that we have to hire peoople that needs to help us. I realy hope not since if you do you are showing your true colors.

[Catbirds]

Originally Posted by lorriem

Some posts are mentioning Hickory as a WNC city I was told it was not when my post was moved? Is it or isn't it?

Yes, lorriem, Hickory is a western N.C. city. Actually, Bakers Mtn. in the Mountain View area is a little mountain that is now a State Park. We always called it in the foot hills here. It takes a little over an hour drive to Blowing Rock. Hickory is surrounded by closer foothill areas that also cross into the mountain region such as Burke and Caldwell. Alexander Co. is a beautiful mostly rural area that is considered foothills.

[lorriem]

Originally Posted by Catbirds

Yes, lorriem, Hickory is a western N.C. city. Actually, Bakers Mtn. in the Mountain View area is a little mountain that is now a State Park. We always called it in the foot hills here. It takes a little over an hour drive to Blowing Rock. Hickory is surrounded by closer foothill areas that also cross into the mountain region such as Burke and Caldwell. Alexander Co. is a beautiful mostly rural area that is considered foothills.

Then I really don't understand why my post was moved to NC instead of WNC even though that I was posting about a beauticiian(who is great) and no 50's hair style there in Hickory. Lenoir area and Hudson 20 min it takes to get there. I was told it was not WNC.

[Catbirds]

Beats me lorriem, I had something taken completely off one time and I still don't know why. Since I am from Hickory, I can vouch that we always considered ourselves from the foothills.

[lorriem]

Originally Posted by Catbirds

Beats me lorriem, I had something taken completely off one time and I still don't know why. Since I am from Hickory, I can vouch that we always considered ourselves from the foothills.

I always had also but it is not in a county that is considered WNC. Go figure.

[memorytheatre]

I think often the geographical rivalry expressed as Southerner vs. Yankee is actually a rural vs. urban thing.

I'd bet that native Southerners (especially small town folks) have much less animosity toward someone moving in who is from Nebraska or Iowa or even Vermont than they do someone from New Jersey, Long Island or Buffalo.

North Carolina has long been a rural, less industrialized state than the Northeast and there is a personality of region that comes along with that. I grew up in Boone and have lived all over the world including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

A fundamental difference between a person growing up in Boone or Asheville and someone from a big city or most places in the Northeast is that the dominant thing surrounding you, the most overwhelming presence in your visual field in Boone is the environment. The mountains, rivers and landscape. The people are mostly all very similar and are all dwarfed by the natural world.

In New Jersey or New York the people and the man-made things and products of Industrialization are the dominant thing. Plus, with so many people the way that one defines their place within the natural hierarchical structure of society is with the products of industrialization. Thus, the import of the way people dress, what they drive, where they went to school, what neighborhood they live in etc. is magnified.

With more and more urbanites moving into the formally agrarian (now suburban) South, the natives fear that through sheer numbers that their inherent culture, quality of life (cost), values (rural) and even the dominant entity surrounding them (the largely unspoiled nature of the place) is increasingly becoming an industrialized, capitalistic commodity to be sliced up, bulldozed over and auctioned off (usually to an urbanite). One symbol of this is the McMansions popping up all over the ravaged mountainsides.

To the urban eye this is no loss or problem. Everything they have been conditioned to value is enhanced through the "progress" of the development. There is still much more unspoiled land around them compared to what they grew up with and their whole bearing of what they value in the world is motivated by the environment that produced them. This is expressed by the kinds of homes built for them. What motivates a person within the urban fabric is projected onto the formally rural landscape and often clashes with the native aesthetic.

When this clash reaches a tipping point people get defensive and begin trying to preserve and protect what they have known and value. This tipping point has been breached in many areas of the country. I know for a fact that Vermonters (my wife is one) have been reacting the same way to "flatlanders" coming up from Boston and New York. They call people from Massachusetts "Mass-holes." People in the Pacific Northwest are reacting this way against people moving up from California. It is happening in many places that don't have a North-South animosity. The language used to express this animosity in the South is often through Yankee this and Yankee that, but I believe it is closer to the spirit of Mass-hole than to any Civil War bitterness. It is just shorthand for identifying someone as the other who superficially does not share ones values.

An argument that is a constant on here is how the newcomers have enhanced the area through economic progress. The thing they don't get is that they are defining economic progress through their own vision of it. To a person from WNC, economic progress is not getting priced out of your ancestral home or having the landscape of your youth modified to fit a non-natives vision of what it should be. With the only thing enabling this developer to inflict his/her will upon your home being that they have gobs of money earned in an entirely different place while you have been here all along playing by the economic rules of this place.

Why should a person have to go make a fortune in New York or go exploit some other place for a while just to be able to afford to comfortably live where they grew up? I know this is the reality and equilibrium of the modern world, but I'm just trying to shine a little light on why some natives are sick of the rapid influx. It is not organic, natural growth and some people are being punished and feel powerless about it, even though they did nothing wrong.