Oklahoma to (likely Western) Massachusetts - Beginning Research (Boston, Worcester: homes, neighborhood)
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As someone who has spent a LOT of time in the south I can attest that it has its share of provinciality (often laced with religion) - just like rural or country areas of the north (think native VT which is not religious but provincial nonetheless). Of course the north has no shortage of arrogant condescension. When you combine the worst of those two the result is usually not pretty. I can see how a couple of people on this thread could find themselves in this situation. Most doors swing both ways.
FWIW, it's not only religious beliefs, it's political beliefs too. I went on a cruise pre covid, almost everyone was from SC because they could just drive to Port Canaveral. I tried to talk with someone because it turned out I had encountered a real "character" once in Tallahassee and this guy KNEW all about him! It was interesting until this person asked me where I was from. Massachusetts.
So he kind of stuck his nose in the air and said, "I don't think we have anything more to talk about."
So much for southern hospitality! They won't even talk to you.
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Originally Posted by massnative71
Not sure I understand the political connection there?
I'm guessing it was political. Whatever it was, religious, political, bitter that they lost the Civil War, it was rude, unfriendly, and uncalled for. Makes you feel strange. I had only said one word: Massachusetts.
But my sister lives in VA Beach and it's a mixture because it's military (Navy) and has people from all over the country. She doesn't love it but she's not moving until next year when she retires to Williamsburg, VA. She did have a recent bad experience in Orlando and says she will never go there again because of the people. So it all depends on where you are in the South.
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Keene and Brattleboro are great, though very self-contained and isolated from metro areas. Nice towns with great quality of life but basically no transportation to other places besides Greyhound.
Some previous posts make it sound like these two towns are conjoined but they’re about 20 miles apart, 20-25 minutes by car.
Neither typically floods, exception of limited areas of town during freak rain incidents like in 2005 and 2011. Choose a place more than 20 feet higher than any river and it will be no worry. New England is far from flat in most places making it easier to live somewhere above the local floodplains.
When I look at it, it's probably even further from a river than where I currently live. Thank you for the info. =)
Certainly, Keene is not the suburban town I've been dreaming of, but Keene is an idea for me to move with my parents. Even still, it's pretty far from any kind of city. But it could be that Keene could cover at least a lot of the bases for me.
I said in the beginning a suburb, but it isn't necessarily the feel of the suburbs I am looking for, it's more about the balance I'm looking for in between a city and the country. It's more about the number of places available to eat, shop, and also having doctors nearby. For you see, where I live currently is an ever expanding suburb of Tulsa. We have places to shop and eat galore between our town and Tulsa. The same goes for doctors.
Keene would be a compromise, no doubt about that. But some things can be given up for having rights, I suppose. Medical care aside, that's very important. I suppose Keene is relatively close to some cities. But it's more like a distance of where I live to Oklahoma City as opposed to one of where I live to Tulsa. I've never had to rely on doctor's appointments that far away.
Anyway, I'm rambling on.
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Originally Posted by Lettyfinhaden
I've been a longtime lurker on these forums, but I had to register to reply to this thread.
I am from Arkansas and am considering a move to Western Massachusetts in a few years, with my husband and youngest son. Unlike OP, I have lived in MA before - I spent a year in Cape Cod after Katrina. I also spent a few years in New York before that. Also unlike OP, we would be moving with jobs - we both work remotely.
What I don't think some people on this forum understand is how... Exhausting it can get, politically. Even living in a blue dot in a red state! Which is about to be all red, as our one blue county has been gerrymandered away! When I first moved back here to be closer to family, I quickly learned not to tell people - coworkers - I had had an abortion, or they would literally call me a murderer to my face. Don't mention religion at all, God forbid you say you don't go to church or believe in Jesus. I made the stupid mistake of letting slip to some former co-workers that I was interested in Tarot cards, and now I'm pretty sure they think I'm halfway to devil worship.
I'm not looking for a San Francisco (I suspect I would find that a different kind of exhausting!). Just a place where I don't have to second guess what I say about who I am and what I do.
So OP, I feel you on this, for sure. Dream those dreams. And if it doesn't work out? You can always move back.
P. S. For all these people talking about how expensive MA is, you should Google one of the many cost of living calculators which factors in taxes, etc. I just used one which figured that Western Massachusetts is about 6% higher than where I am in Little Rock.
Oh dear, that's rough. Having lived in Oklahoma all of my life, I have surrounded myself with people I know I can talk to, while having "moved on" from those I can not. It's a privilege from having been here all of my life and having friend groups, I suppose.
I don't divulge my lack of religious belief, political beliefs, sexual orientation, etc. to my workplace or the general public. I find that it's easy to keep the peace, but at the same time, I don't get out a lot. However, I found quite a few "sane" people at my former workplace - a big box superstore. So they're out there. But as I say: "There are good people here, there just aren't enough".
I wish you the best in your move back to Western MA. I can't imagine that Arkansas is going to be an any better state to live in than Oklahoma. I hope we all can escape the Bible Belt!
As someone who has spent a LOT of time in the south I can attest that it has its share of provinciality (often laced with religion) - just like rural or country areas of the north (think native VT which is not religious but provincial nonetheless). Of course the north has no shortage of arrogant condescension. When you combine the worst of those two the result is usually not pretty. I can see how a couple of people on this thread could find themselves in this situation. Most doors swing both ways.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I spend a good part of a year in TN (as well as a few months in GA). I also lived in ME for a number of years, another place supposedly "notorious" for provincialism. While I occasionally detected an underlying sentiment against those from MA (more so in Maine than the other places), I can't recall a single time where being from Mass. was held against me (at least to my face) anywhere. Not saying these people are lying or anything, but I always find it puzzling how people on this forum claim these encounters on a single random visit while I never experienced anything like it while actually living there. Maybe I'm oblivious, or I'm just not looking for it.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I spend a good part of a year in TN (as well as a few months in GA). I also lived in ME for a number of years, another place supposedly "notorious" for provincialism. While I occasionally detected an underlying sentiment against those from MA (more so in Maine than the other places), I can't recall a single time where being from Mass. was held against me (at least to my face) anywhere. Not saying these people are lying or anything, but I always find it puzzling how people on this forum claim these encounters on a single random visit while I never experienced anything like it while actually living there. Maybe I'm oblivious, or I'm just not looking for it.
When I look at it, it's probably even further from a river than where I currently live. Thank you for the info. =)
Certainly, Keene is not the suburban town I've been dreaming of, but Keene is an idea for me to move with my parents. Even still, it's pretty far from any kind of city. But it could be that Keene could cover at least a lot of the bases for me.
I said in the beginning a suburb, but it isn't necessarily the feel of the suburbs I am looking for, it's more about the balance I'm looking for in between a city and the country. It's more about the number of places available to eat, shop, and also having doctors nearby. For you see, where I live currently is an ever expanding suburb of Tulsa. We have places to shop and eat galore between our town and Tulsa. The same goes for doctors.
Woodwind, I think from your previous post that you live in Broken Arrow? Correct? It should be pointed out that your version of a suburb and what exists in New England are very different.
For example, the "city" of Springfield has 155,929 people. The "suburb" of Broken Arrow has 113,588 people. Broken Arrow is only considered a suburb because its right next to Tulsa with over 400k people.
I do not recall ever having mentioned which suburb of Tulsa I live in. I like to keep that specific detail to myself. But thanks for the info. Part of the reason I gravitated toward MA was because I knew it has decent sized cities. I didn't really know about their scale versus Tulsa or its suburbs, though.
Sometimes the definition of city and suburbs and where people live and where people actually work get blurred. For example if you were to drop Massachusetts in Texas Pittsfield would be considered a suburb of Boston. No one considers that Massachusetts but people in Texas are more apt to drive more, a lot more.
There are cities in the midwest we're frankly you're probably not going to find the volume of people that have planes going to either one. I can't think of anybody that gets on a flight from Cincinnati to go to Indianapolis or Des Moines. If they're close to Chicago they could probably drive there and then take a flight. But a lot of these smaller places don't have as much.
In Massachusetts and two lesser point New England you probably have a significant other of an area within a half hour to an hour away. The default for most flights would be Logan although to go to Asia you're probably still going to have to go New York City the cheapest flight. Bradley Airport in Hartford and t.f. green in Rhode Island have grown significantly.
Urban areas in Mass generally have smaller cities or smaller suburbs surrounding them. Sometimes these are areas where they are more affluent. Some people just recognize the word Boston the Massachusetts and they might not know many of the specific town so it's just what we say. If someone is telecommuting out of Plympton which has only 2,800 people they are probably not going to say they're from Plympton because no one's going to know it.
Urban areas in Mass generally have smaller cities or smaller suburbs surrounding them. Sometimes these are areas where they are more affluent.
I'd say they're almost always more affluent, certainly the suburbs of any city other than Boston and even then, many/most of the Boston suburbs are more affluent than the city itself. Boston proper, Cambridge and Brookline form together an affluent urban core but much of the rest of Boston is more middle/working class. I think swake meant that a suburb in Oklahoma might be much bigger in population than suburbs in Mass and would be cities themselves if not for being right next to a bigger city. But then they wouldn't have grown large without having the adjacent city driving their growth. Generally in the New England states the municipalities-- whether cities or towns-- have narrow boundaries that look more like counties than in other parts of the country where municipal limits can look very random because of annexations. No annexations in New England other than Boston absorbing a few independent towns between 1860 and 1912. Towns and cities can be suburbs or not. Newton (city), Malden (city), Newton (city) are considered suburbs. Brookline and Needham, both towns, are also suburbs, Brookline because being a suburb was the whole point and Needham, like many towns, because it has become one over time. Wellesley was a suburb from the start; the whole point of Wellesley in breaking away from Needham was for wealthy people to have their own town and not have to share any decision making with the farmers and tradesmen of Needham. Now, 140 years later, there are no farmers and tradesmen left in Needham. Many towns are still just their own places. Like Stafford, Connecticut-- not far from Hartford but not a Hartford suburb or satellite like West Hartford, Avon, Glastonbury and so many other towns in central Connecticut.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdovell
Some people just recognize the word Boston the Massachusetts and they might not know many of the specific town so it's just what we say. If someone is telecommuting out of Plympton which has only 2,800 people they are probably not going to say they're from Plympton because no one's going to know it.
Sure, and so the OP did in saying she's from somewhere near Tulsa. We've all heard of Tulsa.
Woodwind, I think from your previous post that you live in Broken Arrow? Correct? It should be pointed out that your version of a suburb and what exists in New England are very different.
For example, the "city" of Springfield has 155,929 people. The "suburb" of Broken Arrow has 113,588 people. Broken Arrow is only considered a suburb because its right next to Tulsa with over 400k people.
This doesn't account for the major differences in how each region defines political boundaries and it paints an extremely misleading picture. Ultimately, there are about 300k more people in the Tulsa area than the Springfield area (1 Million vs 700k). The urban center of Tulsa feels a good deal larger than Springfield's because it's the only major urban center in the region and it's significantly more economically active (Springfield's has a bit of a past it's peak, rust belt feel). But apart from the obvious differences between regions (architectural styles, road layouts, local chains, etc.), suburban Springfield doesn't feel all that much different from suburban Tulsa in terms of size and spread. In fact, I'd argue that the Springfield area might actually feel larger. Tulsa is fairly isolated being around 100 miles from the next significant metro area. On the other hand, Downtown Springfield is about 20 miles from Downtown Hartford (a metro of 1.25 million). The suburbs between the two are unbroken and indistinguishable. The metros are so intertwined that that there's an actual "Greater Hartford-Springfield" distinction (Knowledge Corridor) and the two share an international airport between them. There are over 2 million people in the Knowledge Corridor.
Regarding Broken Arrow, you've got to consider the fact that political boundaries cover a much larger area outside of New England. Broken Arrow may have 114k people in total, but it covers an area of 62 square miles. West Springfield, for example, has 28k people but it's only 17 square miles. It has a near identical population density to Broken Arrow. West Springfield is surrounded by similar suburbs with similar population densities. If you dragged out the political boundaries to match Broken Arrow's, the population would also be similar. And because political boundaries are imaginary lines, it's pretty tough to tell when you've left one and entered another. It's not as if someone in West Springfield, Agawam, Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Chicopee, etc. is going to feel like they're in a much smaller place than Broken Arrow. All are pretty standard suburbs in comparably sized regions.
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