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Different differences

May 29, 2026
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I have lived in four quarters of the continental United States. Born in New Jersey; left for college in North Carolina; moved to Seattle; returned to tidewater Virginia; spent 25 years in the desert Southwest; retiring in the mountains of N.C. In that time, I came across the fact of regional cultural differences. 

Over my seven decades, though, I have seen those differences thin out. The Southern accent I heard in 1966 can still be found, but not so thickly, nor so prevalent as the one greeting me when I went to North Carolina for college. 

Moving to the South when I was 17 years old was a shock. It was a completely different culture. In fact, the first thing I saw arriving at Guilford College was a huge homemade sign hanging from my dorm that read, “FORGET? HELL!” The Civil War was something in history books for Yankee me; in the South, it was in the soil. 

The first time I was blindsided by these cultural differences was when my family took a summer vacation trip to Washington D.C., and on the way, in Maryland, we stopped for lunch and when I ordered a hamburger, my 8-year-old self was shocked, even horrified, that it came with mustard. At that age, you are pretty certain that what is familiar to you is what is normal, and that what is normal is “right.” Mustard did not belong on a burger. Ketchup did. Mustard was for hot dogs.

Food is a major part of the differences, especially the ones that persist. No one ate pickled herring in the South, and I couldn’t find a decent kaiser roll, to say nothing of pastrami or a real pizza. Cabbage was turned from a hot vegetable into slaw; instead of spinach, there were collards. (I later became quite fond of Eastern Carolina barbecue, hush puppies, and fried okra. In New Jersey, okra, if it ever appeared, was boiled and slimy. I now order me some “fried okree” whenever it’s on the menu.)

The regional differences have been sanded smooth over the years, as national chains supplant local businesses, nationally watched TV has blanded out the accents, and population migration has averaged out some of the distinctions. But vestiges of the flavor remains. 

While the shock of easing from the North to the South is likely the greatest between regions, each section of the country had its idiosyncrasies. 

When I moved to Seattle, there were salmon and giant geoduck clams (say, “gooey-duck.”) The design influence of Northwest coast Indians was common. And over the city, seen on a rare clear day, was a looming Mt. Rainier, somehow indistinguishable from the clouds. There were Rainier Beer commercials on TV. The populace was divided between Rainier drinkers and Olympia drinkers (locally known as “Oly.”)

In Arizona, there was great Mexican food everywhere, food so good that I miss it now, when eating at the ubiquitous Mexican restaurants outside the Southwest, the same way I miss New Jersey pizza. Yes, it’s still good, but nothing like the real thing. What they call “too hot” in North Carolina doesn’t even register on the tongue trained in Arizona. I’ve never had a green corn tamal anywhere that came close to those at the El Bravo restaurant in Phoenix. 

But it isn’t just food that I wanted to write about. When I first came South in 1967, in my innocence, it hadn’t occurred to me that along with the change in accent from “dese” and “doze” to “y’all,” I would also confront a very different set of courtesies, different gender expectations, along with a different diet. 

The most obvious was the awareness of race. In New Jersey, skin color wasn’t of much concern. By eighth grade, I habitually took the bus from the street in front of my house to Manhattan, where I spent many happy hours in the museums and book stores. The city was a vast mixture of ethnicities and the ferment was heady. It was also “normal.” 

When I got to college, I learned that such a mixture was not considered normal. It wasn’t so much hatred, as it was a completely different attitude toward race. Everyone seemed aware of it at every turn. The east side of Lee Street in Greensboro, was where the “coloreds” lived. The barber near the college refused to cut the hair of our Sikh history professor because, he said, “We aren’t trained to cut black hair,” despite the fact that Dr. Suri, being Indian, was not black and the hair under his turban was notably straight. His skin was dusky. 

There was obvious antagonism in some quarters. When the future NBA star M.L. Carr played on our college team (I went to a Quaker school, where segregation was not practiced, at least not overtly) and went to the local hash house with his white teammates, someone taking exception cut the brake line on their car while they were inside, causing them to crash on their way back to school.

And it could be downright ignorant and ugly. In 1968, a group of us liberal-minded Guilford students decided to visit a Ku Klux Klan rally in Liberty, N.C., to see what it was like. It was as vile as we had feared, including a cross burning and a main speaker who was also county sheriff. The smell of alcohol was in the air, along with the kerosene used to douse the rag-clad cross. I found out that they hated Catholics almost as much as they hated Jews and … you get the picture. 

But most of the time, it wasn’t that obvious, just that the city bus through the upscale Starmount development left the main road to carry Black housemaids in the morning to their jobs, and in the afternoons back home. The infrastructure was designed to advantage racial expectations. 

So, it wasn’t just race. Where I grew up in northern New Jersey, the populace was heavily Roman Catholic. My Boy Scout leader was Mr. Weinstein. Half the school spelled their surnames with a vowel at the end. I was best buds with Aurelio Orlandini. Some of my friends went to parochial school and had tales of nuns with rulers. Protestants went to church, Catholics went to Mass, and Jews went to temple. Just variant religious beliefs. Again, the mix seemed natural and we hardly gave a thought to it. At the Klan rally, however, even Methodists were suspect. 

It was also manners. When I later married a Southern woman, she scolded me if I didn’t walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk. I wasn’t being discourteous; I had never been trained. Calling women “ma’am” or men “sir” wasn’t a thing, either. I had a lot to learn. I was used to, “Hey, Bud…”

In Jersey, the only marker of driving from one town to the next was a roadsign that said, “Entering Bogota” or “Entering New Milford.” The population was spread evenly over Bergen County, with no breaks between towns. When I got to the South, there was farmland or woods between settlements. How quaint, I thought. 

People talked slower, moved slower, and while I grew up prioritizing efficiency, I learned that efficiency was considered merely rude below the Mason-Dixon line. Wait for that old lady on the corner to cross the street, even if the car can get out of her way much faster than she could get out of my way. I have lived in the South, now, longer than anywhere else, and I am now slower, too, and not just because I am old. Just yesterday, in the grocery store parking lot, I stopped the car to let a man pass in front of me. It hit me then that I have become acculturated. And it made me think again about all of this. 

The plunge into the South as a callow youth may have been the biggest cultural shock, but each major move in my life gave me new surprises.

I knew snow in New Jersey, and humidity in North Carolina, but in Seattle, I learned that a constant drizzle wasn’t even considered rain. It took a downpour for anyone to consider an umbrella. Grey skies was the norm, and a sunny day was a news event. In Seattle, everything was on a hill, and a the Cascade Mountains walled the east and the Olympic Mountains dominated the west, across Puget Sound. 

When my wife and I moved to Phoenix, where we lived for 25 years in the desert, instead of rain, we had endless days of sunlight, and eight months of unbearable heat. It may have been a dry heat, but when it hits 122 degrees, and the airport shuts down because of it, you aren’t much aware of the humidity index. And the so-called dry heat turns quite soggy in July and August with the advent of the monsoons, dragging humid air up from the Sea of Cortez. In most months, after taking a shower, you don’t need a towel; by the time you begin dressing, you are already dry. During monsoons, you stay indoors with AC or change shirts several times a day.

We thought nothing of driving an hour and a half to Tucson to watch an opera and then drive back when the curtain fell. Distance was felt differently from when I grew up, and the trip from Teaneck to Cliffside Park, where my grandparents lived, seemed expeditionary, although it was probably more like 7 miles. But then, I was a little kid back then and the world seemed immense to my novice brain. 

I came to love the desert, although I never warmed up to Phoenix, which I used to call “Cleveland in the Desert.” Phoenix offers little charm, but lots of traffic. Still, on weekends we could drive out of the city to beautiful desert, mountains, and canyons. I got to travel almost everywhere in the state, writing for my newspaper. I wrote hundreds of travel stories. 

But, I was, for the bulk of my career, an art critic. I grew up going to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim, the Met, the Whitney. The city was attuned to international art. Other regions tended to feature regional myths and tastes, so, in the South, there were lots of paintings of tobacco barns and farmhouses. In Seattle, ravens and killer whales in the style of Northwest Coast Indians. Phoenix was awash in cactus and cowboy art. Of course, when I have traveled elsewhere in the U.S., those regional themes show up, too. 

But after decades of increasing cultural uniformity, I see the country breaking up again, region from region. Not only red states from blue states, but rural from urban, Anglo from Hispanic. Not just the former Confederacy rebuilding the Lost Cause mythology, aiming its ire at the formerly industrial North, which spends very little time thinking about them. The working-class Northerners deriding the college-educated expertise. Everyone eyeing everyone else with suspicion. 

I have come to think of the United States as comprising seven distinct regions, each with its own internal differences (i.e. barbecue vs. gumbo), but increasingly tribal allegiances. There’s the Northeast; the South; the Midwest north; the Plains states; Texas (yes, Texas is its own self-regarding region); the Southwest; and the Pacific states. 

(My map has state lines as the borders of regionalism, but in reality, northern Virginia perhaps belongs now with the Northeast, and perhaps western Pennsylvania aligns better with the Midwest. My map is only a broad suggestion.) 

Each has its distinct culture and folkways. Each, like me when I was eight years old, believing its own way is normal, and therefore right. Perhaps this alternating increase and watering down of cultural self-alienation is just a normal pattern of history, like the longterm shift leftward and the retrenchment shift rightward, and then back again, the breathing rhythm of culture, but the current re-stamping of regional passports seems to be making us increasingly insular. Although I’ve always enjoyed the flavor of regional difference, the regions I grew up with were  largely unconcerned with other regions. The new regionalism seems to believe the others are somehow out to get them. I worry.

Rule of thirds

May 26, 2022
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Cartoonist Reg Manning said you could take in all of Arizona in three great bites. Manning was the Pulitzer-Prize winning political cartoonist for The Arizona Republic from 1948 to 1971. And he wrote a book, What is Arizona Really Like? (1968), a cartoon guide to the state for newcomers (he also wrote a cartoon guide to the prickly vegetation of the state, What Kinda Cactus Izzat? Both required reading for any Arizonan.) 

Anyway, his introduction to the state bites off three large chunks: the Colorado Plateau in the north; the mountainous middle; and the desert south. It is a convenient way to swallow up the whole, and works quite well. 

I spent a third of my life in Arizona and I traveled through almost every inch of the state, either on my own or for my newspaper, and I never found a better explanation of the state (and state of mind) than Manning’s book. Admittedly, the book can be a bit corny, but its basis is sound. 

But my life has been spent in other parts of the country as well, and I came to realize that Manning’s tripartite scheme could work quite as well for almost any state. 

I now live in North Carolina, which is traditionally split in three, with the Atlantic Coastal Plain in the east; the Piedmont in the middle; and the mountains in the west. The divisions are quite distinct geologically: The escarpment of the Blue Ridge just up from the Piedmont, and the coastal plain begins with the Fall Line — a series of dams, rapids and waterfalls that long ago provided the power for industry. 

But that is hardly the only example. I grew up in New Jersey, which could easily be split into the crowded suburban north, where I grew up; the almost hillbilly south, which is actually below the Mason-Dixon Line, and where the radio is full of Country-Western stations (and who can forget the “Pine Barrens” episode of The Sopranos?); and finally, the Jersey Shore, a whole distinct universe of its own. 

And when I lived in Seattle, Washington state was clearly divided into the empty, dry east; the wet, populated coast; divided by the Cascade Mountains. Oregon was the same. It divided up politically the same way: a redneck east, a progressive west, and a mountain barrier between. 

So, I began looking at other states I knew fairly well. South Carolina and Georgia follow North Carolina with its mountains (“upcountry” in South Carolina), its Piedmont and its coast. Even Alabama does, although its coastal plain borders the Gulf of Mexico. 

Florida has its east coast; its west coast; and its panhandle — all quite distinct in culture. Michigan has its urban east, its rural west and then, hardly part of the state, the UP — Upper Peninsula. There’s lakefront Ohio, riverfront Ohio and farmland Ohio. 

Maine has a southern coast that is prosperous and filled with tourists; a northern coast (“Down East”), which is sparsely populated and mostly poor; and a great interior, which is all lakes, forests and potatoes. 

Massachusetts has its pastoral western portion, with its hills and mountains; its urban east, centered on Boston; and then there’s Cape Cod, a whole different universe. 

Heck, even Delaware, as tiny as it is, has its cities in the north, its farms on the Delmarva Peninsula and its vacationland ocean shores. 

Go smaller still. Draw a line down the center of Rhode Island and everything to the west of the line might as well be Connecticut. For the rest, Providence eats up the northern part and south of that, Rhode Island consists of islands in Narraganset Bay. 

Colorado has its Rocky Mountains and its eastern farmlands, separated by the sprawling Denver metropolitan area. 

But I don’t want to go through every state. I leave that to you. Indiana has its rural south, its urban midlands with Indianapolis, and that funky post-industrial portion that is just outside Chicago. Oy. 

Yet, as I looked at that first state, defined by Manning’s cartoons, I realized that each third of Arizona could be subdivided into its own thirds. This was getting to be madness. 

The Colorado Plateau is one-third Indian reservation, both Navajo and Hopi; one-third marking the southern edge of northern Arizona in what might be called the I-40 corridor of cities and towns from Holbrook through Flagstaff and on through Williams to Kingman; and a final third that encompasses the Grand Canyon and the remote Arizona Strip. 

The mountainous middle third of the state includes the Mogollon Rim and its mountain retreats, such as Payson; another third that is the Verde Valley; and a finishing touch the Fort Apache and San Carlos Indian reservations.

Finally, in the south and west, there is the urban spread from just north of Phoenix and continuing south through Tucson and that nowadays continues almost to Nogales and Mexico; there is the Chihuahuan Desert portions in the southeast, from Douglas through the Wilcox Playa; and in the southwest, the almost empty desert including the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, the Barry Goldwater bombing range, and up to the bedraggled haven of trailer parks that is Quartzsite. And no, I’m not forgetting Yuma. 

It’s a sort of “rule of thirds” applied to geography. It seems almost any bit of land can be sliced in three. Phoenix itself, as a metro area, has the East Valley, including Mesa, Scottsdale and Tempe; central Phoenix (which itself is divided into north Phoenix, the central Phoenix downtown, and the largely Hispanic south Phoenix), and the West Valley, which nowadays perhaps goes all the way up through Sun City to Surprise. 

Here in North Carolina, the Coastal Plain runs through the loblolly pines and farmland of eastern North Carolina; into the swampy lowlands of marshy lakes and tidal rivers; and on to the Outer Banks and the ocean. Another tri-partite division. The Piedmont has its 1) Research Triangle; 2) its Tri-city area of Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem (extending out to Statesville and Hickory); and 3) the Charlotte metro area; and the mountains include first the northern parts of the Blue Ridge, around Boone and Linville Falls; second, the Asheville area, which is a blue city in a red state; and finally the southern mountains around the Great Smokies. Thirds, thirds, thirds. 

Even Asheville, itself, comes in three varieties: East Asheville (where I live); downtown (where the drum circle is); and West Asheville (where the hippies live). West Asheville is actually south of downtown. Why? I dunno. 

You can go too far with this and I’m sure that I have. After all, it’s really rather meaningless and just a game. But you can divide California into thirds in three completely different ways. 

First, and too easily, there is Southern California; central California; and northern California. Each has its culture and its political leanings. But you can also look at it as desert California, including Death Valley and Los Angeles; mountain California, with the Sierra Nevada running like a spine down the long banana-shaped state; and populated California north of LA and in the Central Valley. 

Finally, you can split California into rural, farming California, that feeds the nation from the Central Valley; wilderness California with deserts and mountains; and entertainment California, from Hollywood and LA up through San Francisco and Skywalker Ranch (and all the wine) that keeps America preoccupied with vino et circenses. 

The U.S. as a whole is often looked at as the East, the Midwest and the West. The East then subdivides as the Northeast, the Middle Atlantic States and the South; The Midwest has its Rust Belt, its Corn Belt, and its Wheat Belt. The West has its Rocky Mountain States, its Pacific Coast states and, well, Texas. 

And, I suppose if you look at the world in toto, you have the West, including Europe, North America and Australia; you have Asia, or the East, which includes China, Asian Russia, and most of the Muslim nations; and the Third World, which comprises most of the rest. You can quibble over Japan as Asian or a First World Nation; and India seems caught between, with growing prosperity and growing poverty at the same time. 

These distinctions are coarse and could well be better defined and refined. And I mean nothing profound — or even very meaningful — with this little set of observations. It is an exercise in a habit of thinking. If anything, I just mean it as a counterbalance to the binary cultural prejudice of splitting everything up into pairs. There is a countervailing cultural pattern that prefers threes to twos. I wrote about this previously in a different context (link here). 

We think in patterns, and well-worn templates. But the world doesn’t often present itself in patterns. The world lacks boundary lines and the universe is a great smear of infinite variety. The mental template allows us to organize what is not, in reality, organized. The most pervasive template is the binary one, but we are entering an increasingly non-binary culture. Of course, thirds is only one alternative pattern. Perhaps best is to ignore patterns and look fresh at evidence. 

The patterns are roadmaps for thought, and we can too easily take the easy route and fit the evidence to the pattern rather than the reverse.