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Old 02-18-2012, 04:37 PM
 
Location: South St Louis
4,362 posts, read 4,540,936 times
Reputation: 3156

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I had a lot of general misconceptions as a very young child:
I thought all Alaskans lived in igloos and hunted and fished for food.
And that everyone in Hawaii wore grass skirts and spoke Hawaiian.
I thought most people in the Pacific Northwest was a lumberjack.
And that most people from states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee lived without electricity and running water.
And I thought that everyone in Texas was a cowboy.
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Old 02-19-2012, 06:22 AM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,292 posts, read 84,276,199 times
Reputation: 114638
Quote:
Originally Posted by debzkidz View Post
I've met people (grown up, adults) who thought New Mexico was part of Mexico and that you needed a passport to visit and had to change your dollars into pesos. These were people that lived in Texas, a state that borders New Mexico.
I can remember reading an article about that--how so many Americans did not know that New Mexico was a state. I couldn't believe it--they didn't have the puzzle of the United States when they were kids???
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Old 02-19-2012, 10:13 AM
 
3,674 posts, read 8,644,855 times
Reputation: 3086
The United States to me was the Bronx (where my family came from), Chicago (where we lived) and LA (where some of my family had moved to).

I saw a lot flying over the country, and it was so desolate. Impossible swathes of absolutely nothing. As a child, it looked to me like wasteland, and very ugly wasteland at that.

I never could wrap my head around the idea that there were these arbitrary states in the middle of this country. And the whole concept of state capitals had me confused; why were they even there?

It's changed a lot, but still
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Old 02-19-2012, 10:43 AM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,292 posts, read 84,276,199 times
Reputation: 114638
Quote:
Originally Posted by coldwine View Post
The United States to me was the Bronx (where my family came from), Chicago (where we lived) and LA (where some of my family had moved to).

I saw a lot flying over the country, and it was so desolate. Impossible swathes of absolutely nothing. As a child, it looked to me like wasteland, and very ugly wasteland at that.

I never could wrap my head around the idea that there were these arbitrary states in the middle of this country. And the whole concept of state capitals had me confused; why were they even there?

It's changed a lot, but still
I came from north Jersey and only worked in Manhattan, but I think living in the NY metro area you grew up with a sense that everywhere else was empty and somehow not caught up. When I first started working in the city at 20, I started to read the NY Times. I remember reading about some art exhibit that sounded interesting and read that it would be at the Metropolitian Museum of Art the following month, but it was currently at an art gallery in St. Louis. I remember thinking, St. Louis has an ART GALLERY? I thought St. Louis was a little town on the Mississippi where the rangers drove in their cattle from the ranges to sell it for meat to ship to the big cities. I couldn't figure out who on earth would be interested in art in a place like that.

Anyway, that was 30 years ago, and I'm a little smarter now. There ARE real cities that have electricity and books and everything in that wide, middle area of the country! Imagine that.
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Old 02-19-2012, 10:49 AM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,292 posts, read 84,276,199 times
Reputation: 114638
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1greatcity View Post
I had a lot of general misconceptions as a very young child:
I thought all Alaskans lived in igloos and hunted and fished for food.
And that everyone in Hawaii wore grass skirts and spoke Hawaiian.
I thought most people in the Pacific Northwest was a lumberjack.
And that most people from states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee lived without electricity and running water.
And I thought that everyone in Texas was a cowboy.
Well...in the early 80's I visited a friend who lived in Dallas. Her mother was from Texas, but I knew her because she lived most of her life in New York.

It was like being in a different country to me. Everyone did this two-step dance thing that I couldn't figure out, and ALL the men wore cowboy hats and boots. Some of them paid $800 for lizard or snakeskin boots. The girls my age (23) in my friend's apartment complex were all on their second marriages already and had two or three kids. And EVERYBODY, male or female, had a gun and knew how to shoot guns. I'd never even touched one.
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