I lived in Birmingham, Ala., for three years, and I’m always happy to talk about it.
What I’ve wearied of is the shock and amazement people often express when I mention my time in the South.
People who wouldn’t bat an eye if you told them you once spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, or driving through Africa, or doing volunteer work in Belize will stare at me in wonder, and exclaim, “Wow! How was it down there?” as if I really have done something truly exotic. More often than not, they express curiosity about the natives, inquiring, in weirdly hushed tones, “What are the people like?”
“They’re kind of like us,” I like to say. “Two arms, two legs.”
Alabama, of course, is a much different place from New York, or New Hampshire, where I grew up. But my philosophy is that, wherever you go, you’re likely to meet interesting people and see interesting things. This observation is so obvious as to be banal, but there was a time when I harbored all sorts of strange prejudices and misconceptions about other parts of the U.S.
When I learned that my randomly assigned college roommate was from South Dakota, I had some concerns. South Dakota? What were people from South Dakota like? But then I actually met my roommate, and I liked her. She was nice and smart and brought me cookies when I had to stay late at the newspaper office, and the more time I spent with her, the more interesting her South Dakota-ness seemed, until finally I decided to visit her hometown during fall break to learn more about the place that had played such a crucial role in her development.
College was something of a geographic melting pot. I befriended people from the South and the Midwest and the West Coast for the first time. How bad could a place be, I wondered, if it could produce such great people? I liked visiting the homes of my friends, regardless of whether they were in Kentucky or New York City.
It was around this time that I also began to develop an appreciation for New Hampshire for the first time in my life. I’d never really thought much of my home state before — it had always seemed small and boring, a little close-minded — but I was beginning to see that there were certain things that made it special, even unique: the mountains and lakes, the presidential primary, the rural character and sense of community. I learned to take pride in my roots, while also gaining a healthy respect for other parts of the country.
I enjoy making fun of stuff — it’s basically my hobby — but I don’t make fun of people just for being from a place that’s different from where I’m from, and I don’t make fun of places just because they seem uncool. I guess that’s where I’m different from political satirist Stephen Colbert, who during an interview with former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (who is considering a campaign for U.S. Senate in New York, and whom I totally recommend making fun of), asked, “Are there other places in New York that you designate as ‘helicopter only?’ Because I would recommend that for Schenectady. I would just look at that on Google Maps.”
Just as I’ve grown weary of people talking about Alabama as if it’s some sort of bizarre foreign planet, I’ve also grown weary of people saying things like “Schenectady? What kind of a name is that?” and smirking about how weird it sounds and its funny spelling. Which is not exactly what Colbert did, but close enough. (Although it can be argued that he was really making fun of Ford, for never having traveled much outside New York City.)
There’s no reason to get too worked up about Colbert, of course, and the Gazette had some fun with his comment, compiling a list of the things Gazette staffers love about Schenectady. From the Stockade to Proctors to the city’s Italian bakeries and restaurants, they’re all nice places, well worth checking out.
What makes Colbert funny are his no-holds-barred attacks on power. You can make fun of Schenectady on national TV, but what is the point? All it does is reinforce the suspicions of people who live in smaller communities (read: anyplace outside of New York City or Washington, D.C., or possibly Los Angeles), which is that big-city elites enjoy looking down their noses at them.
People are weirdly, perhaps irrationally, proud of their hometowns; if there’s one characteristic all communities seem to share, it’s resentment of people from the outside who mischaracterize and stereotype them, even if it’s all in good fun. My roommate, for instance, disliked the Coen Brothers movie “Fargo” because she thought the Midwestern accents were over the top. (The Coen Brothers are from Minnesota, so maybe they were just making fun of themselves.) I tend to cringe at jokes about the supposed backwardness of an area, be it Alabama or rural New England.
And, apparently, upstate New York.
Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section. You can email Sara at sfoss@dailygazette.net.
