Batching RE-Transplanted Persepective.

"I don't think for a second that the people I had seen and talked to in New England were either unfriendly or discourteous, but they spoke tersely and usually waited for the newcomer to open communication. Almost on crossing the Ohio line it seemed to me that people were more open and more outgoing. The waitress in a roadside stand said good morning before I had a chance to, discussed breakfast as though she liked the idea, spoke with enthusiasm about the weather, sometimes even offered some information about herself without my delving. Strangers talked freely to one another without caution. I had forgotten how rich and beautiful is the countryside-the deep topsoil, the wealth of great trees, the lake country of Michigan handsome as a well-made woman, and dressed and jeweled. It seemed to me that the earth was generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it." -John Steinbeck

I've been back "home" for a week and half, and I see such stark differences in attitudes and behavior from the wonder of the Midwest. I'm speaking much like Steinbeck, because I am thinking like him. I've been reading and re-reading passages from Travels with Charley and I am in complete agreement and shared relationship with the same experiences of the beauty and hearth of the Midwest countryside and its people.

After returning in my own personal welcome after a disappointing last few days in my former home, I have been greeted in the same value of crippled emotions of where I had grown up. I didn't know any better of such a tawdry atmosphere until I had experienced something else. Northeasterners, here specifically I speak of Mainers, are taciturn, frank, assuming, and most disappointingly - they are hard to place trust in others. They do not speak openly with strangers. They assume all conversations are to be started like a car; upon planned and active implementation with a key to an ignition, a foot to the clutch, and push of the gear shift. Everything planned and calculated, there is no welcome for free flow of tongue.

I miss the air of candor and kindness of the Midwest. What is negatively hashed upon here in the Northeast of life in the Midwest is acumen to their character. What is not normal, what seemingly fails to be outside their comfort and subjective beauty is tarnished with mental images and words to sooth their own geocentric views. When speaking of other lands, Midwesterners talk in sincerity of their positive experiences or their lust to visit. Never can I remember hearing any negative self-assuming remarks of places away from their home. I miss this, and think to myself to make the Midwest a future home shared with those who don't know any better as I had before my return.