Indiana stereotypes? (Fort Wayne, Austin: employment, buy, dangerous)

[I-miss-Ind]

As I remember most of the towns in IN roll up there sidewalks by 6-8pm and on weekends by 10pm except the big cities like Indy,SB,FW and such.

[Candy T]

Originally Posted by fallingwater

I moved to the South Bend area from Detroit this past summer. Ive been here long enough to notice some things.

-I havent met anyone with an accent or noticed

-People seem friendly

-The area seems to be in a little bit of a time warp. Never looked at so many houses with orange countertops!

-houses are either really small or huge.

-Getting anything done like a library card or car plates is a huge hassle. They seem paranoid. Bring 3 pieces of ID or your not getting anything done.

-Cant walk out of the Mishawaka Wal-mart without having my bags searched and needing to show proof I bought the stuff.

-The radio stations suck. Never heard so many 80's songs since....well the 80's

-The news anchors on tv seem uncomfortable and inexperienced. There is one new guy that has such a stone face I cant help but crack up every time he does the news. His partner has the worst highlight job in her hair I have ever seen.

-Cant find a decent pizza joint to save my life. It used to be our friday night ritual. No more.

-Big Meth problem

-Snows like B here and they dont plow or salt the roads

-awesome parks in Mishawaka

-driving around UP mall at Xmas was a nightmare.

I will report later as I live here longer

Here in Northwest Indiana:

"houses are either really small or huge"---I live in a really small one. There are all sizes available here, for all budgets.

"Bring 3 pieces of ID or your not getting anything done." Same here, ever since 9/11

"Cant walk out of the Mishawaka Wal-mart without having my bags searched and needing to show proof I bought the stuff." Here, too. I carry my receipt in my hand and stop. They either check or wave me on. No problem.

Radio stations and TV are all out of Chicago. I suppose if we had an antenna we could point it to an Indiana station.

"Cant find a decent pizza joint to save my life." There are some good ones around. Stay away from chains. Or you can go to Chicago. Or make your own like hubby and I do.

Heroin problem here.

They used to salt the roads big time here, so much that I needed to wash the salt spray off the front windows in the spring, but this year with the higher cost of salt they are doing much less, someone said it's the YOYO policy---"you're on your own".

I stay away from malls.

There are some good things going on here, but hubby and I are looking forward to moving to southern Indiana. We want to live in one of those smaller towns that rolls up the sidewalks on weekends.

[LateNight]

I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, and lived their until 2005. I think some of the pronunciations in Indiana, such as "warsh" and "PEE-ru" are common among many middle American states and subject to Southern influences. I've never pronounced wash "warsh" or Peru "PEE-ru", but my grandmother in Bluffton would say "warsh". My mom is from New England, so I adopted a kind of hybrid way of speaking. For example, in the East, they pronounce "route" as ROOT, which nobody says in Indiana, but I use both versions of the word, whichever I think of first.

* Someone once told me that everyone he had ever met from Indiana, always backed their car in backwards into a parking space. They then asked me how I would park. I had to admit with a smile that I back it in as well.

* According to my Boston mom, when she moved to Indiana, she noticed that everyone seemed to prefer Pepsi, instead of Coke like on the East coast.

* And according to my own observations, looking at personal ads for fun. Nobody loves antiquing, yard sales and bowling, like Indiana women!

[SookieStackhouse]

Indiana stereotype.... saw your username and I immediately thought Princeton Indiana.

[ljayeb004]

I have lived in indiana all of my life until now (just recently moved to South Carolina), Hoosiers from Central Indiana do not, for the most part have accents, and we enunciate words clearly and correctly. If you go north of say, Noblesville? you'll run into a more classic "country" sterotype, as well as south of Moorseville. You'll hit more urbanized people in Bloomington, and Evansville, but they are still pretty country compared to those of us who grew up in and around Indianapolis like I did. Indiana does not have a lot of sterotypes really. We love basketball and open wheel racing, and of course, The Colts, and personally South Carolina is ok...but I miss the flat corn covered fields of Indiana. Thats what I love about back home. I lived less than 8 miles from downtown Indy, but my town also had corn and farmers. I had it both ways. Small town suburbia is where I lived, but I could see the Indy skyline if I wanted to. No better place, in my opinion.

[ljayeb004]

HAhahaha. i didnt even notice the Princeton thing, but I've been there SO many times. I have a grandma that lives there, and my dad grew up on a farm down there. Not really much of an exciting town, but not evey place can be Indianapolis.

[BCLead]

I was born in east central Indiana and my Grandparents (Gramma and Grampa) moved to Indiana from southern Kentucky (on the Tennessee border) around 1910. My Italian wife's parents were from Providence, Rhode Island and my wife still laughs at how I pronounce some words: pilla (pillow), yella (yellow), skillet (frying pan), ruhf (roof). I didn't know until I was married that a mango was not a green pepper. On my first trip to Rhode Island, I had to get used to being called Tahhd instead of Todd. My son didn't understand "Go play bwal with Pwal" (Go play ball with Paul)! Our son seems to have an accent all his own; a genuine mix of East Coast Italian with a southern Kentucky/Hoosier twang. I suppose it's a wonder he can talk at all!

[Jaxson]

Originally Posted by BCLead

I didn't know until I was married that a mango was not a green pepper.

I just recently had to explain the mango thing to my DD while she was reading some old local church cookbooks. She only knew about the mango fruit and I didn't know about it until the early 1980s when I went to FL.

Growing up we ate mussmelon, not muskmelon which really is canteloupe.

[whatsthebigdeal]

as someone who has lived all over, and is going to be living in Ft. Wayne on a more permanent basis after living here in temporary spurts, I think I have an interesting perspective on this.

- when people find out I lived in Indiana they immediately think they have to catch me up on the last six months worth to technological breakthroughs as though no one in Indiana can use a computer.

- in California, especially, it was a commonly held belief that people from Indiana were religious zealots and no minorities or intellectual people live there.

- when I lived in Chicago they had a decent enough idea of where Fort Wayne was, but believed it was connected to Gary, almost like Chicago blends into Gary and blends into Fort Wayne. Because they perceived this, they thought Fort Wayne as a tough, down on its luck manufacturing town and that I had lived in a warzone or something.

- even though Fort Wayne has been called the "Austin" of the Midwest, in terms of the music and arts scene, most people do not think there is any form of culture in Indiana, this was especially true when I was in California.

- people in California thought I talked too quickly and without clarity and attributed it to the fact I lived in Indiana.

- even though when I lived in Chicago a cougar was shot in the middle of a city neighborhood, people in Chicago related to me their fear of wild, dangerous animals that roam freely in Indiana and always mentioned an almost urban myth about a "guy who knew a guy who knew a guy, who was mauled by coyotes at the dunes on a weekend trip with his family."

- everyone smokes, and I kind of see this when I live here for any stretch of time, there are far more smokers in Indiana than anywhere else I have lived and it does make walking unpleasant at times.

[♪♫♪♪♫♫♪♥]

There seems to be a lot of liquor stores and churches, here in Indiana and the Midwest overall. In my hometown (not my current place of residence) of 55,000, having literally 254 churches is probably a little excessive, but folks apparently can get fit-shaced immediately after services because there's always a liquor store around every corner. I guess the 'down and out' residents need God to pray their problems away, and alcohol to help them forget what they prayed for.

We also seem like the "South of the North", too. I dunno what it is about this state that makes every other hick pretend he/she's a Southerner. Sure there's accents here and there, but nothing like Lou-easy-Anna.