eastern suggestions? (Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro: crime rates, buying, high school)

[mhogan10010]

I apologize if I came off a bit too strong. But when you read these posts, you get the impression that people think moving to NC is like going to be the be all and end all of human existence. I spent 6 years visiting NYC before making the move. I tried to really inform myself about the nature of living in a city like this and talked to as many people as possible. I heard a lot of positive and negative, but came away better informed and able to make a good decision.
Therefore, since I have lived in both the Midwest and Northeast, I think I can point out some things that will be a cultural shock to folks that the should be prepared for. I think I bring some perspective that may be of value.
No offense to Bethanytedder. My wife was working in the intensive care unit at Pitt when she had her health crisis. She may have treated her, don't know. In fact I could probably drop a couple names of folks she would know. I still have friends in Greenville area and my Mom lives in the Western part of the State and a Niece in Beaufort. I am sure I will be "Down East" again some day for a visit. Sure would like some of that Dixie Queen Cat Fish.

[Niki]

Get used to being called a Yankee and blamed for everything bad in society. The civil war was yesterday to indigenous Tar Heels. Unless you are willing to chime in and slam the North every other breath, you will stick out like a sore thumb.

I was born and raised in NC and have lived here most of my life. (All but 6 years of it.) I've rarely seen such behavior.

Get used to waiting... It is a slow down kind of culture.

Depends on where in NC you live.

3. Don't try and sound too educated. They equate that will being "prideful".

lol Not true.

Get used to being nickeled and dimes to death on taxes. I even had to pay tax on each car I owned and had to list our pets.

Funny. We've never had to list our pets.

Adjust to $10 per hour being good pay, unless you luck into a big company or own your own business.

Depends on what you're getting paid $10 an hour to do. My husband makes quite a bit more than that and he's a crane mechanic.

First, I have never lived anywhere with such regional pride.

Nothing wrong with being proud of where you're from if it's worth being proud of. I've met plenty of people from other states who were very proud of where they were from.

They don't even accept people from other areas of the state very fast.

Can't say that I've ever seen that happen.

They think Pitt county is unique in the State.

Who's "they"? Pitt County residents? What do they think is unique about it? (People becoming millionaires from selling their land?) I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. Most folks outside of Pitt County rarely think about the place. lol

Secondly, the weather is brutal.

lol Brutal? I would hardly describe it as brutal. Antarctica is brutal. The Sahara Desert is brutal.

You have about 5 months out of the year that the heat and humidity is oppressive. I mean from 7 in the morning to 11 at night.

Hmm. The high today was 87° with about 46% humidity. Not bad. Though, admittedly, it will get hotter and more humid as Summer goes on. lol Around 7:00 AM it was in the 70s and at around 11:00 PM it was also in the 70s. Quite comfortable.

They you have the Hurricane Season.

I've been through a couple hurricanes too while living on or near the coast. You have to be prepared, that's for sure. Here in Greensboro though, we don't get a lot of hurricane activity.

Then in the spring you can't go outside without sneezing your head off from the yellow pine dust...

Only if you have allergies. And if you do, there's medicine that will take care of your symptoms.

In the winter, it rains.

Sometimes. If we're not getting ice (2-3 times a year at most on average) or the rare snowfall, we're usually pretty dry in the winter.

Better have your last bite of good Chinese or pizza before you go to Eastern NC.

You gotta know where to look.

Oh, learn to love hog. You will have to endure a Pig Picken at every major social function... And, it is a unique kind of sauce. All Vinegar and peppers.

Lord, it's been years (close to 20) since I've been to a pig pickin'. No sauce with that though. The sauce is in the barbecue. There's eastern NC barbecue (whole hog, vinegar, spices) and western/Lexington NC barbecue (pork shoulder, vinegar, spices, tomato sauce). Neither of which I've eaten. I've never had the desire to. lol (No tomato throwing from my fellow Tar Heels, please. ) I eat much more chicken and beef than I do pork. I'm not big on pork.

Tobacco. Chew it, smoke it, live it, love it.

Tobacco is not so popular anymore. Thank God. I've always hated the smell of cigarettes and cigars. And I can honestly say I've never known anyone personally who chews tobacco. Gross.

PS-Hope you don't like major sports.....

And why is that? We have Panthers NFL football (they're quite good) and Hurricanes NHL hockey (national champions). Not that pro sports are reason enough to move to or stay away from a place.

If that doesn't discourage you, then maybe you ought to go down and join the red-neck revolution.

Rednecks, eh? Well, there are rednecks in every state. Rednecks really have nothing to do with this. lol Not that there's anything wrong with being a redneck, of course. There are far worse things. lol And, no, I'm not a redneck. No tobacco for me. No pick-up truck. No country music. No huntin' dogs. I don't own a gun. (I've never even held one). Aside from watching the occasional NASCAR race, I don't fit any of the redneck stereotypes.

God bless.

[silverwing]

Originally Posted by ITChick

I am a midwesterner who doesn't have a thick skin.
I can joke that I am a "Yankee", but if it is said to me in a hostile manner, on more than one occasion, I would not be appreciative.

ITChick, I'm a Midwesterner; 4th or 5th generation, in fact. If anyone calls you a Yankee, they don't know a hill of a lot about history There were plenty of southern sympathizers in the Midwest during the Civil War, with conflict that was as contentious and bloody as any battlefield in Virginia - probably more so, considering the atrocities that the Midwestern southern sympathizers visited on Union supporters. Just tell the Yankee baiters that you are related to William Clarke Quantrill and see if they get a blank look on their face. If they do, tell them to go to the library and look him up, the dolts
[hint for anyone scratching their heads and too sheepish to google
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/i_r/quantrill.htm] (broken link)

[Niki]

To most (if not all) Southerners, a Yankee is anyone from north of the Mason/Dixon line. The Civil War has nothing to do with whether or not they consider you a Yankee. In the South "Yankee" is the same as "Northerner".

Of course, outside of America, we're all Yankees or Yanks. lol

[mhogan10010]

.Nki,

You really missed the point. The thread is Eastern Suggestions. Greensboro is not Eastern NC. Unless you have "lived Down East", you have no idea of what I was talking about. As I said in an earlier post. North Carolina is divided into three major sections. Western NC - Eastern NC and most everything in between.
I live in Western NC for 5 years. Other than making the kind of adjustments that any outsider would have to make, it was basically a very positive experience. My parents were originally from McDowell County before they moved to Detroit for work (like droves if Tar Heels did in the early 20th Cent).
I have always considered Western NC my home away from home.
The experience I was referring to was specifically in Pitt County NC-Greenville - in Eastern NC. It is like no other place I have ever seen in the South. I had a college professor who was from Ayden NC. I ran into his wife at a conference. Told her where I was living. She went on for half an hour about the regional pride and unwillingness to accept outsiders and their overt references to Yankee this Yankee that, and she was from Tennessee.
So - I don't put Greensboro in the same category at all. But if someone is asking me about life in Eastern NC-That is what I experienced.
Frankly, it is impossible for an indigenous resident to really understand the experience of someone coming from outside. When you are part fot he homogeneity, then you simply don't hear or feel things the same way. It would be impossible for me to fully appreciate the experience of a person coming to Michigan from the South. or a person coming to America from a foreign country. I thought these forums were for the purpose of honestly sharing ones experience with others. There are many Yankees (how ever you want to define that, used to have a friend in Greenville that said anyone North of the Tar river was a Yankee LOL) that move to Eastern NC and manage to fit in and love it. I just think folks need to take off their blinders and see that all of the friendliness etc. isn't all they may encounter there and that it is going to have some of the same problems as where they are coming from. Just trying to help them think through the issues

[ITChick]

Originally Posted by silverwing

ITChick, I'm a Midwesterner; 4th or 5th generation, in fact. If anyone calls you a Yankee, they don't know a hill of a lot about history There were plenty of southern sympathizers in the Midwest during the Civil War, with conflict that was as contentious and bloody as any battlefield in Virginia - probably more so, considering the atrocities that the Midwestern southern sympathizers visited on Union supporters. Just tell the Yankee baiters that you are related to William Clarke Quantrill and see if they get a blank look on their face. If they do, tell them to go to the library and look him up, the dolts
[hint for anyone scratching their heads and too sheepish to google
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/i_r/quantrill.htm] (broken link)

Thank you Silverwing! I needed that confidence boost. Although I appreciate reading mhogan10010's opinions, I want to give NC a fair chance before I even decide that it's not for me. And I'm a Midwesterner 4th generation too!

Now I have to go google William Clarke Quantrill before I tell anyone he's a relative of mine.

[Niki]

lol Yes, I know NC is divided into three sections (mountains, piedmont, coastal plain). I also know that there are some differences. Mostly accents and way of life.

I was born and raised on the NC coast (Wilmington, Southport, Boiling Spring Lakes), lived in or near Fayetteville for a time, and spent a short time (a year) not far from Greenville in a little town called La Grange. My husband and I had moved there from Greensboro. It was different for us as far as pace (much slower than Greensboro, but that's not a bad thing) and the accents were different - deeper, stronger. There were a few Yankees that we knew living there. (One of them a loud guy from New York. lol I forget his name, but we liked him.) They never complained about how they were treated. They sometimes poked fun at Southerners (I reckon they were just teasing for the most part), but they liked living there. They were doing well financially, had plenty of friends, and were just enjoying life there.


I know what it's like to be an outsider (we moved to northern VA when I was 12, then northern Ohio when I was 15) - to have people make fun of my accent and try to correct the way I pronounce things (that was so annoying). Mostly though, it was a pleasant experience. Even though the winters were horrible (I'll take hot, humid summers over freezing cold winters any day! lol) and I was terribly homesick for North Carolina. There was beauty to be found in Virginia and Ohio, and I had plenty of friends there, but I never felt at home until we moved back to North Carolina. So, yeah, I understand.

God bless.

[mhogan10010]

Nike,

I am going to submit you for a position with the NC State Tourism office.

You're nothing if not persistent.

God Bless
PS-I'm an Ordained Baptist Preacher. Cheers.

[Niki]

lol I can't tell you how many times friends have told me that I should work for them. Not that I think I know enough about NC for such a job, but I do have a great deal of love for my home state. As I heard a preacher say once, "I not only can't help myself, I don't wanna help myself!". Of course, he was talking about spiritual things when he said that. lol

All the best!

[silverwing]

Originally Posted by ITChick

Thank you Silverwing! I needed that confidence boost. Although I appreciate reading mhogan10010's opinions, I want to give NC a fair chance before I even decide that it's not for me. And I'm a Midwesterner 4th generation too!

I think our circumstances differ a lot from other transplants in that we didn't have much of a choice about our move here. We could have made ourselves very unhappy about it; certainly some of our coworkers allowed themselves to be made miserable and gave up on this place; but it worked out great for us. There have been some pretty vocal nay-sayers here, but they're in the minority.

We've been here almost 20 years, having been pretty much forced to come. Certainly we could have told the company we worked for "no", but that would have meant losing our accrued benefits (4 weeks vacation a year, vestment in a good retirement plan) and trying to find jobs in an economy that was in poor shape in that part of the country. Leaving the company would have meant that Dh and I would have been split up. We both worked in the same area and our schedules meant we had a lot of quality time together. We had reason to resent the move, even though our thoughts were "there'll be the mountains and visits to the beach. Nothing like that here. Lots of historical places to see, certainly a lot more interesting than this dull place." Certainly we would have had reason to feel put upon and resent any remarks made by natives about where we were from, but I honestly don't recall any of that. Initial teasing, I think, mostly based on some faux paus we committed: not liking Cheerwine, asking "who in the heck is Dale Earnhardt and why is he so popular" and expressing revulsion over the BBQ -- which I have never gotten to like. Sorry, but putting cole slaw on BBQ instead of the side? *blech* When we make trips back to the Midwest, we load up on the KC Masterpiece sauce to bring back. I make noooo apologies for disliking the BBQ

Our life has been made better by moving here, we absolutely do not want to go back to the Midwest. And we can't think of any other part of the country where we'd want to live -- something we've mulled over as we put in our last decade of work before retiring.

The only thing I can advise is to accept that this is a different place, but don't look on the differences as being negative. And don't worry about how you'll be treated. You'll be living in an area that has had more time to adjust to the transplants than when we first moved down here. And if we weren't hassled that much, I doubt you'll have many problems, unless you bring them on yourself (as I could say about some of the posters here )

Now I have to go google William Clarke Quantrill before I tell anyone he's a relative of mine.

Hee When I told my mom we were moving to "The South", she said "you know, you're related to Robert E. Lee." I did some scratchy geneology and found that she was right. His mother's sister is part of my matriarchal line. I could probably point my thumb at my chest and puff about that, saying that I am descended from an aristocratic Southern line, but that's getting a little ridiculous.