> My wife noticed and commented on this when
> she tranplanted from New Engand
> (specifically Massachusetts) to the Midwest
> (specifically Ohio). She told me that she
> noticed a marked difference in the way
> strangers interacted with each other.
> Compared to Midwesterners, New England
> denizens seem cold and austere...

That's one of the few things I don't like about New England, but I can say things in its defense, too, by elaborating a bit. When one says "New England" it's important to realize that clarifying what part of "New England" you're talking about makes a world of difference. At the same time, the ultimate effect may not make much of a difference for visitors to the area.

Southern New England -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island -- is much as you describe. There are pockets of rural neighborhoods that are warm and congenial, but tourists typically aren't going to find them. Southern New Hampshire and southern Maine are like this too, even though these areas are more rural than Boston and its suburbs and the smaller cities in Hartford and Rhode Island.

However, once you go north a bit, everything changes. You go from the formal austerity that comes with living a rushed urban life to a completely different mindset that nevertheless still often comes off as formal austerity.

Northern New England is extremely rural. It's beautiful, too, and I'd love to live there, but even if I could find a job up there -- no chance of that even in a good market -- one would have to forgo one's access the parts of the world where things happen. It's a pretty idyllic lifestyle, and the more north you go, the more idyllic it gets. In the mid-regions of New Hampshire, you get scattered 2000-3000 person towns. North of them, you get 1000-2000 person towns spread out about 15 minutes' drive through unpopulated forests apart from each other, with just one or two towns larger than that. Another hour north, and it is empty all the way to the Canadian border. The largest roads to be found are winding roads that go through hilly woods. Scoot east into Maine, and you can continue going north another five or six hours, and it miraculously gets even MORE empty.

Now, within these pockets of civilization in these northern areas, visitors probably don't notice much difference in the mentality of the local residents as from southern New England. They may still come off as formal and austere, but it's not for the same reason. New Englanders are notoriously reserved. They're suspicious of outsiders. Tourists are tolerated, because they bring in the business they live off, but when town populations as much as *double* in the summer (such as is almost the case in Lancaster, NH), I'm sure it's easy to see how the locals would be frustrated at the drastically increased traffic and flurry of activity.

Few locals are disdainful or outright rude toward "folks from away" but they do live year to year seeing their idyllic lifestyle threatened by the urban growth from further south and by the creeping influx of people moving in who don't understand the culture. So it takes a long, long time for someone who moves in to be accepted as a local.

The crucial difference is more observable once you're a part of the life up there instead of a visitor to it. Because New Englanders, contrary to popular belief, *are*, at heart, pretty warm and accommodating people, at least except in the backwoods hick towns. I don't live in northern New Hampshire anymore, but my parents do (for "only" 12 years now), and it's pretty conspicuous to me that they have a pretty fantastic community around them and behind them that they have managed to become important, active members of.

(Northern) New Englanders are funny that way. Just when you think you have them figured out, you can find something that completely makes you rethink every stereotype you ever figured on.

But getting back to the initial point -- if you're a stranger walking down the street in some New England town (northern OR southern), you'll find both formal austerity and some congenial courtesy. But if you're a stranger walking down the street in some Virginia town or some Carolina town, you will indeed find strangers to be, in general, a lot more forthcoming with warmth and welcome.

I just don't want to say that and let that be the end of it, because New Englanders, being a reserved but honorable and often misunderstood people, deserve the other side to be told.